Americans are NOT Free? Britains ARE more Free? They Hate our Freedom or our Actions?

How free are Americans? Are they really as free as they think? President Bush says that the terrorists hate our freedom but is that really true? The British Muslims in this picture are obviously more free in London than they would be in America? Even the most biased would have to agree to that? I see them as venting and this set of pics has been sent to me by several American friends over a period of two years and it is supposed to appall me but does it? No ….A big big no. I recognize for a start that these people are no different from the ones that I taught to drive in Peterborough for 25 years and who were good students and good people. The young ones would sometimes have a few racial issues in the summer and there might be a few fights or attacks but on the whole they were law abiding. As an aside is it not funny/strange that most racial riots/issues emerge in fine weather and not in the dead of winter in a cold country. Same in Paris and Berlin. Have these people harmed a fellow citizen in the last 30 years? No. A few did one time but that’s all. Back to the issue of ‘freedom’. These people in these pics are free to vent and then go home to virtual luxury in contrast to those in Baghdad without power and water. They vent about bigger issues. They vent about Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. They vent about Haditha. They will read online as do I of the fear of people displaced by our presence and killed as collaborators when they work for us and living in tent cities afraid and poor and starving under our banner of protection? “Sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you” is something that most kids were used to hearing in my youth and it applies still. These bad mouthing demonstrators do not strap bombs on and had not ever before 9/11 and would have been sympathetic to the US before Iraq and the images that we have all seen of unfortunate transgressions. The longer we go on occupying a sovereign nation in the Middle East the more radicals will be recruited as Osama Bin Laden had a hard job recruiting Europeans to his cause and since the invasion of Iraq has a much easier job. To the many Americans who look down on Britain as they view these photos I would just say this. I would sooner be part of a truly free country where you can vent and publicly protest even though I don’t agree with the ‘wordage’ than to be in a country where such a public outcry might result in a lynching. There is just as much anger here amongst Muslims as to our missteps but money and safety keep them quiet and subdued. I would be safer in London where I could openly debate with a Muslim that I think we are wrong to be so interfering and dominating in the Middle East. I want us to withdraw and let them be themselves. No one should be occupied and Americans seem to have no concept of what it would be like. My Channel Islands were occupied by the Germans and I was part of an occupational force in Germany for five years and it 'sucks' I am sure. Watch ‘Casablanca’ the classic movie and put America in place of Germany and Iraqi’s in place of the French? Grow up and get more versatile. Just because you guys don’t travel much does not mean you need to lack imagination? Imagine a Tank lumbering through and past the ‘Alamo’ with a rising sun logo on them? Worse still that they demolished the building as it might hold ‘insurgents’ as resisting Americans would be perceived? Imagine if the power nation was Arabian? Imagine if a force mightier came and sucked up all the oil in the world and which nation would be destitute and shambolic the soonest? Those in tent city outside Baghdad would be THE least affected right?

Are you a TRUE Christian? I hurt for these people. I see the misery caused in the eyes of the elderly and the children. Why are people left to live like this under our banner? Would they have less fear if we were not there? I think probably so. The person forced to 'collaborate' to live would not have been killed and also why are we not sheltering the families of people who are killed as collaborators? Why too are WE able to call those who would kill a collaborator of the illegal occupation of their Sovereign country an 'Insurgent'? Why? Because we are lord and master just as was my nation of Britain in the days of the Revolution. Have we learned nothing in our history about the rights of man to resist 'domination'? Stand up and be counted. Vote for change. Lets stop invading and bombing and occupying minnow nations. Patrick Lockyer Writer American Chronicle.

Kurds and Arabs Shelter Side by Side in Distrust and Misery (bottom two photos)

A Sunni Arab great-grandmother, who thinks she is about 100, lives with her family in a tent city after being driven out of Baghdad. More Photos >

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Nov. 7 — On a barren, trash-strewn plain on the outskirts of this city, two groups — one poor and Kurdish, the other displaced and Arab — huddle side by side in distrust and suspicion.

They are united only in their misery, their fear of the coming winter and their envy of those thriving nearby in Sulaimaniya, the largest city in the Iraqi region of eastern Kurdistan. The estimated 200 Kurds living in the tent city here say they find work one or two days a week as day laborers. A good day brings $10. Living in a tent with no running water keeps the overhead down. They move frequently, they said, and so their children — filthy, thin and barefoot — cannot attend school. A few have fled from the continuing violence in Kirkuk. Others, the locals said, are Qurag, the Kurdish word for Gypsy or Romany. A Kurd, who gave his name only as Ramazan, gestured at the tents of the Arabs who had come here to escape the killing in Baghdad and Diyala in the south.

We don’t like them — we have not forgotten Halabja and Anfal,” he said, speaking of Saddam Hussein’s murderous campaigns against Kurdish civilians.

They get food and supplies for free from the government,” another man said. “A tanker comes to give water to Arabs. We have to pay.” Other Kurds at the camp are more charitable, pointing out that the Arabs taught them to write their names in Arabic over time. This gained them free rations too, until the government caught on and cut them off with a severe reprimand. A hundred yards down the line of ragged tents, the Arabs are grouped together. Degrees of squalor are difficult to gauge, but they appear to be as poor as the Kurds. Some of their tents and blankets are marked U.N.H.C.R., after the initials of the United Nations refugee organization. Registered as internally displaced persons, they are entitled to meager rations, some bedding and a monthly allowance, they said.

Hamza Muzahem, a community leader who arrived two months ago from the notoriously violent Baghdad neighborhood of Saydia, said he left his home after a letter with a bullet was slipped under his door. Mr. Muzahem needed no further warning; he had seen numerous Sunni neighbors slain by Shiite militias. His story is perhaps the least dramatic here. A well-dressed woman, stepping carefully through the dust in high heels, casually told a visitor of how her husband, a translator for the American military, was killed after neighbors discovered his line of work. A 4-year-old boy, Ali Al Jamoori Mohamed, lay on a tent floor to re-enact the killing of his mother and father in their home. He is being raised here by relatives. A hollow-eyed 17-year-old, Khaled Mohamed Al Timini, recalled how his parents and two brothers were taken from their car and executed on the streets of Dora, another violent Baghdad neighborhood. That same day, he said, he left his house and all his belongings behind and made his way to this camp. He said he could not concentrate, had stopped attending school and had found no work here.

Still, he is thankful. “It is safe here,” he said simply.

What possible justification do we have for occupying these people's country? They live in fear of us and not anyone else? We have created the conditions of fear and mistrust. They don't have the simple luxury of power at a switch. Not even in the towns. We patrol their towns in Tanks and Armored Cars and enter their premises and oft times in the dead of night. They have to fear that if they collaborate and work for us that they will be executed and we care not for the families that suffer so? Do we bring them to USA? NO! We decided who would rule our country and did so on the basis of 'pro life and pro marriage' and in doing so WE gave our 'carte blanch' for an illegal invasion and an occupancy that has gone on too long. Do you think that these people lose an ounce of sleep over our abortion laws or our same sex marriage issues? Do you think that whether Mexicans who have lived here and worked here for twenty years should be allowed to drive legally or instead should be deemed 'felons' matters to these people caught up in our desire to protect our oil supplies? Do you think that these people care one way or the other whether gun control in South Georgia will come about or is it even fair that a far distant opulent nation with obesity problems should govern their very lives day to day? Whether we depart soon or whether we hang on and create a few more orphans in order to be able to say we 'defeated them', hangs on whether we choose a Christian tyrant or a Mormon one. That is so 'base'. They look defeated to me? How many more 'resistance fighters' must we kill to feel we 'won'?“ Patrick Lockyer