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05/08/2004: "Abu Ghraib: another view"
Think all Muslims, all Middle Easterners, or all Iraqis feel the same way about the photos from Abu Ghraib? Not so, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which interviewed some local Iraqi immigrants:
"It's a terrible thing and it adds more wood to the fire," said Hussein Al-Muhanna, who came to the United States in 1993. "(But) to me, it's not the issue I have to worry about. To me, the main issue is Iraq's future."
Imad al-Turfy, another Everett resident, shows no sympathy for the prisoners, saying their treatment paled when compared with the horrors inflicted under Saddam Hussein's regime.
"They raped our women. They killed our kids. So there's hatred between us, the people here, and the people in Iraq," he said, referring to the Shiite Muslims who emigrated and the Sunni Muslims who ruled Iraq under Saddam.
"Anything coming to them would make me happy."
Mosafer Al-Yaseri, a Lynnwood resident, said that the abuse by some soldiers should not taint the overall efforts of the U.S. Army.
"(The Iraqis) feel soldiers come from good families. Over there, there are 135,000 soldiers. Out of that, 10 people are bad," he said.
And as for Arab media showing the photos over and over again:
Mosifer Al-Yaseri said that while the Arab TV network al-Jazeera has repeatedly shown photos of the Iraqi prisoners, it did not report about abuses under Saddam.
"If there's a good story about how Iraq has changed, they never show it," he said. "They never showed a bad thing about Saddam Hussein."
This doesn't mitigate anyone's guilt, of course, nor is it meant to imply that Arab outrage is any less real. Just pointing out that things aren't as black-and-white as they seem.
