Iraqi president angry at claim that abuse is 'worse than before'

[Thom Little]

Margaret Neighbour
The Scotsman
Monday, Nov. 28, 2005


Iraq's president Jalal Talabani yesterday hit back at the former prime minister Iyad Allawi, dismissing as "nonsense" his claims that human rights abuses were as bad now as they were under Saddam Hussein's brutal regime.

Mr Allawi was quoted yesterday as saying that people were "doing the same as Saddam Hussein's time and worse" and warning of the dangers of widespread human rights abuses, which he described as a "disease" which would spread throughout government.

His reported remarks provoked fury from Mr Talabani. "I cannot imagine that such nonsense has been said by Dr Allawi because he is very well aware that now in Iraq we are enjoying all kinds of democratic rights," he said.

"If we go back to Saddam's Iraq, we see that it was turned by Saddam into concentration camps on the ground and mass graves underground. How can one compare this new situation with that situation, which was unique?"


http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2313312005

[kcwayne]

1. Well of course its different, you don't need mass underground

graves when you are vaporing people with napalm and phosphorus.

[gratuitous]

2. It's a dirty lie!

Why the abuse now is ever so much better than it was under Saddam. You think he took photos of the torture, so the victim's families could enjoy their relatives' demise, too? He did not. No, Saddam just had lurid tales of torture and killing, and let folks' imaginations fill in the details. Under Mr. Talabani, everything's just so much better.

Here's a kind of radical idea: Quit torturing and abusing people. They tried that in South Africa, and while that country has its own set of problems, extra-judicial reprisals against the brutes and thugs of the Apartheid regime aren't among them.

[maddezmom]

3. duplicate topic

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1950247