Good Iraq news

[andrewducker]

Can be found here.

While the situation may not be going well (ha! understatement!), but apparently the fact there is even theoretical freedom in Iraq is prompting the surrounding countries to introdice new freedoms.

In Syria, President Bashar Assad has announced an end to 40 years of one-party rule by ordering the Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party to no longer "interfere in the affairs of the government." The party is planning a long-overdue national conference to amend its constitution and, among other things, drop the word "socialist" from its official title.

Assad has also liberated scores of political prisoners and promised to hold multiparty elections soon. In July, a petition signed by over 400 prominent Syrians offered a damning analysis of Ba'athist rule and called for political and economic reform. The fact that the signatories were not arrested, and that their demands were mentioned in the state-controlled media, amount to a retreat by Syrian despotism.

"What we need is a space of freedom in which to think and speak without fear," says a leading Syrian economist. "Bashar knows that if he does not create that space, many Syrians will immigrate to Iraq and be free under American rule."

* A similar view is expressed by Hussein Khomeini, a mid-ranking mullah and a grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic in Iran.

"I decided to leave Iran and settle in Iraq where the Americans have created a space of freedom," Hussein Khomeini says. "The coming of freedom to Iraq will transform the Muslim world."

Hussein Khomeini is one of more than 200 Iranian mullahs who recently moved from Qom, the main centre of Iranian Shiism, to Najaf and Karbala, in central Iraq, to escape "the suffocating atmosphere of despotism in Iran."

Comments

heh

[josephgrossberg.livejournal.com]

Hussein Khomeini -- what an unexpected name for someone who supports US foreign policy. :)

P.S. I don't regularly read opinion pieces in the British press, but do statements like, "I decided to leave Iran and settle in Iraq where the Americans have created a space of freedom" irritate UK supporters of this war? You know, with Britain (and Australia) not getting their due credit.

Re: heh

[andrewducker]

It probably annoys some people, but I think most of us don't really worry about it.

Especially as it means that more people blame the Americans than us too...

Re: heh

[josephgrossberg.livejournal.com]

When I was in Australia in college (c. late 1996), whenever China denounced nations, the editors would all hope that their nation was included. Pretty funny to behold.