Iraqis Cheer in the Streets

[Frank]

quote:Originally posted by PeacefulWarrior

Sometimes I wish I weren't such a rabble rouser.  But it's fun!

I can very much appreciate that point of view. It's the fun that captures the imagination and being able to roll with it is ecstatic.

Yours,
Frank

[Rob]

quote:then admit that you're completely deluded.

I am completely deluded!!
lol
its fun
but I read bbc and rense (arg!!) too, although they might just cancel eachother out...
News slut...haha

Rob

[MJ-12]

zx

[Celeste]

What I want to know... is what's Billy Joel doing in Iraq? []

http://www.iraqwar.ru/article_image.php?id=2561

[Nerezza]

I never made the picture, it's been going around for a week or two.

[PeacefulWarrior]

Everytime I read these articles and see the images of Iraqis cheering in the streets it makes me realize how much these people are grateful to be liberated from the Butcher of Baghdad and his terrible, violent regime.  Now it's America's job to hurry up, finish up, rebuild infrastructure, assure that there is an honest gov't in place and GET OUT.  
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CROWDS CHEER IN BAGHDAD STREETS
11:00 - 09 April 2003
 
Jubilant crowds welcomed US Marines in eastern Baghdad today as Saddam Hussein's reign appeared to be ending.

And the centre of the capital was eerily quiet, with regime officials melting away and little evidence of any fighting. BBC correspondent Rageh Omaar said there were "dramatic reports" coming in from the east of the city.

"There is looting of government stores, people going out into the streets without seemingly any fear, chanting anti-government slogans.

"Really government control has ebbed away," he said.

There were reports of no police on the streets of the city.

Allied forces were tightening their grip on the city today and made further inroads in the north and south of the country.

U.S troops entered Baghdad from the north for the first time and U.S Marines moved deeper into the city from the east.

The jubilant scenes were in Saddam City, a poor Shiite district in the east of the capital, where Marines were clapped and cheered, according to reports.

Iraq's Shiites have suffered persecution at the hands of Saddam's regime.
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Dancing in Baghdad streets

Hundreds of Iraqi civilians danced and cheered in the streets of Baghdad today as Saddam Hussein's iron grip on the city was finally broken.    
 
Looters raided the administration`s offices, abandoned shops and government residences in the capital, taking furniture and food.

In parts of Baghdad, men, women and their children were pictured cheering and giving ``victory`` signs to foreign TV cameras.

One man, who appeared to be in his late 50s, tore down a picture of Saddam Hussein wearing his trademark military beret and sunglasses.

In a mark of the dramatic changes that were sweeping the city, the man took off his shoe and used it to beat the image of the dictator`s face openly in the street.

``This is the criminal, this is the infidel,`` he said.

``This is the destiny of every traitor ... he killed millions of us. Oh people, this is freedom.``

The man continued to beat the image of Saddam with his shoe - an act considered to be a great insult in the Arab world.

Others joined in, pulling at the picture and kicking the canvas until it was ripped loose from its buckled wooden frame and torn into strips.

According to reports, government officials fled the city earlier in the day, and Saddam`s controversial information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf cancelled his morning press briefing.

Some areas of Baghdad east of the River Tigris remained eerily quiet, and were still in the control of Saddam`s loyalists, according to Sky News reporter David Chater.

``This is perhaps one of the last pockets where the Americans have yet to reach and there`s still quite a lot of armed resistance,`` he said.

But elsewhere, men, women and children ran and danced in Baghdad`s dusty streets, carrying office chairs, sacks of grain and other supplies on their backs.

They stood in the sunshine beside the bombed shells of official Iraqi buildings - the now gutted, lifeless symbols of Saddam`s rule.

Children grinned and gave thumbs-up signs to TV cameras in the city.

Paul Wood, BBC World correspondent in Baghdad, said looting was happening across the east of the city.

``People are now adjusting to the new realities which we are seeing on the streets of Baghdad about a kilometre away,`` he said.

He said locals who claimed to be ``in charge`` of the uprising had told him they did not want the Americans to run their city.

``The `leader of our revolution`, one of the Shias, told me `We don`t want the Americans here. We are glad that Saddam has gone, we see this now as an opportunity to take control of our own lives`.``

ITV`s John Irvine, said by the channel to be the first reporter to meet US Marines in Baghdad, said Iraqis were hurling stones at pictures of Saddam outside the HQ of the secret police.

Others were dousing the images in petrol and setting them ablaze, displaying extreme pleasure in doing so, according to Irvine.

Irvine asked one of the Marines in the city how it felt to be there.

The soldier replied: ``Pretty good. It`s nice to represent marines here. We entered Baghdad last night, but have just got to the centre now. The reception has been great.``

For the first time foreign journalists working in Baghdad were able to work without being monitored by Iraqi officials.

TV pictures showed US soldiers seemingly at ease as they walked along roadsides, many with their rifles dropped to their sides.

Other scenes showed hundreds of Iraqis waving their guns in the air, while those without weapons took up branches and waved their clothing in displays of approval.

Ian Glover James, a reporter for ITV in Baghdad, said the scenes of celebration and looting had turned ``ugly`` in some places.

``Initially (it was) very good-natured. We saw a crowd ransacking what had been a government intelligence headquarters.

``They were coming out with office furniture, office chairs, bottles of Chivas Regal whisky and other fine blends of drinks normally unseen here in Baghdad.

``But on our return on the way out, the scene had turned rather more ugly.

``There was a man standing in the middle of the road with a very heavy calibre machine gun, the kind of thing that`s mounted on an armoured vehicle normally.

``There was at least one corpse on the ground and it did look like the crowd that had been busy looting had had an altercation and gunfire had ensued.``

Among the chants being shouted by the jubilant citizens of Baghdad were ``Saddam is god`s enemy``, and other reports said Iraqis were also shouting ``Good, good Bush``.

As news of the jubilation in Baghdad spread across Iraq, civilians in Basra and Arbil joined in celebrations of their own.

In a pooled despatch from Basra, Keith Harrison, of Wolverhampton`s Express & Star, said pictures of the Iraqi dictator ``were defaced on street corners``.

Despite rumours of Baath Party officials observing the crowd, the men were finally confident enough to speak out, he said.

Abal Malam Al Fussah, a 28-year-old English student from Al Zubayr, told Harrison: ``We have waited many years for this.

``Saddam is evil and he has gone. He killed Muslims, his own people and stole our money to buy palaces and cars and guns.``

And, drawing a finger across his throat to cheers from the crowd, he added: ``He must pay the full price.``

The scenes of celebration spread to Arbil in northern Iraq, where crowds of men gathered to cheer and wave, holding aloft pictures of their Kurdish leader.

US and British officials cautiously welcomed the news.

But coalition commanders warned that there could still be significant opposition and more fierce battles as loyalist fighters continued to defend Baghdad.
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TV images of crumbling regime cheer Iraqi-Americans



THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


Iraqis in Michigan paraded through the streets waving American and Iraqi flags, while others around the nation greeted signs that Saddam Hussein's regime is crumbling with tears of joy.
Worries about relatives in their homeland persisted, but a wave of relief washed over many in the Iraqi-American community Wednesday as they saw news reports of collapsing opposition to U.S. troops in Baghdad.

"This is a day we've been waiting for 35 years," said Feisal Amin Al-Istrabadi, a Chicago lawyer who went in late to work after watching events unfold on television. "It's a tremendous relief that it seems that this is the beginning of the end. I'm very, very proud to be an American today, as well as an Iraqi."

In Dearborn, Mich., a crowd of about 200 people and dozens of honking cars paraded by the Karbalaa Islamic Center in the largely Arab Detroit suburb.

Some people stood on car roofs, others chanted slogans in Arabic, including "Hey hey, Saddam, hey Saddam, where are you going to escape to?" and "Saddam is dead, long live Iraq." At one point, the crowd used candy to pelt a large cardboard drawing of Saddam, took the picture out into the street, jumped on it and eventually tore it in half.

"Today is my birthday," said Ali Al-Ghazali, 46, a native of southern Iraq. "But it's also the birthday for all Iraqis."

Salah Flaih, who decorated his Manchester, N.H., convenience store with American flags and a life-sized cardboard cutout of President Bush, hopped up and down as he watched television images of U.S. Marines and Iraqis topple a 40-foot statue of Saddam that stood in the center of Baghdad's Fardos Square.

"Oh, the Iraqi people are happy now," said Flaih, 49, who moved to New Hampshire with his wife and sons 2 1/2 years ago. "It's the happiest moment in my life. It's my liberation day."

In Lincoln, Neb., Omar Younis watched the same images. "It's exciting, it's very great," said Younis, who has family living in Mosul. "I wish I was there to participate with the people."

Ithaar Derweesh, who hasn't been able to sleep more than three hours a night since the war started, said he woke up early to "the adrenaline rush of watching history unfold," seeing television images of people throwing flowers at American tanks, waving flags and removing symbols of Saddam's regime.

"It's beautiful," said Derweesh, 32, a Cleveland surgeon whose family left Iraq when he was 9 years old. "I cried tears of joy."

But not all Iraqi-Americans shared those feelings. Hadi Jawad, vice president and board member of the Dallas Peace Center, said he sees coalition forces not as liberators, but as subjugators of Iraq's people and resources.

"They have resorted to war, to violence, to killing thousands of Iraqi civilians," he said. "The means they have resorted to to accomplish the removal of the regime is unconscionable. It's a criminal act."

As Iraqi-Americans watched the looting in the streets of Baghdad, they also are concerned about relatives living there, and whether they have electricity or running water.

"I'd like to see calm restored," said Al-Istrabadi, whose cousins, aunts and uncles live in Iraq. "One of my nephews is 20 years old. He has never known a regime other than Saddam's. So this is where the future of Iraq lies — how are they going to be able to engender and maintain these democratic institutions?"

Now, the hard work begins, said Al-Istrabadi, who is vice president for legal affairs at the Iraqi Forum for Democracy.

"The liberation of Baghdad is in many respects the easy part," he said. "How do you go about reconstructing a civil society? How do you go about reintroducing the rule of law? While I'm optimistic about the future, I also realize that it's going to be a herculean effort."