- The 1st thing that struck me was that all the pictures of Saddam were gone, now of course I’ve noticed that before but I didn’t think about it seriously, I mean NOBODY asked me whether I liked it or not, besides who did this? Was it the Iraqi people? Impossible, Iraqis loved Saddam (the whole media can’t lie) was it the Americans? I think if they had spent their time removing his pictures they would’ve been in Nassireah right now. So I came to the conclusion that there must be a conspiracy behind this, and don’t ask me what conspiracy and who conspired and why, it’s a conspiracy and that’s it.
- The second thing that annoyed me was that NO policeman or security guard or American soldier bothered to ask me where I was heading, where did I came from and didn’t even ask for an I.D. I checked my wallet and I found that I wasn’t carrying any, and in fact I haven’t carried an I.D. since the 9th of April, while prior to that I used to carry 2 or 3 I.D. cards (including the military service certificate) and still I would check my wallet every now and then to make sure that I haven’t forgot or lost any on the road. I mean seriously what is a man without an I.D.?
- Another distressing incident came as I went to buy a newspaper, I found dozens of strange Iraqi newspapers and magazines and more foreign ones ( the total number of Iraqi newspapers till now is 132) instead of the 10 that were all owned by the government before the war, and I said ”what a mess! Who am I supposed to believe now?
An Iraqi discovers the sad truth and his gift for sarcasm.
A little removal of context, the change of “were” to “was,” and here’s what we get, in this instance from the Associated Press:
Bush said former chief weapons inspector David Kay, who has said that U.S. intelligence was “almost all wrong” about Saddam’s arms, said Saddam found the “capacity to produce weapons.”
The take away message: everything we thought we knew was wrong (and Bush is lying). But of course, that’s not at all what Kay meant. Here’s what he said (and here’s the video):
Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here.
Kay is clearly saying that everybody was wrong about the extent of Iraq’s existing WMD stockpiles, not that anybody in particular was wrong about everything.
This is precisely the reason that I find myself instinctively searching for original transcripts. Now, that would be a worthwhile service: a wire that provided the actual words that people use, in context.
Where is the scope for creativity in that?