Things go better with Bush By our broad behind the burqa, Miranda S Givings |
According to a new survey, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis believe life is better under the benevolent US Dictator, George W Bush, than it was under the heel of the murderous Mussulman, Saddam Hussein |
A total of 39 Iraqis were quizzed by our reporter, in a quest to discover the state of the nation on the anniversary of their liberation from tyranny. Almost all (93 percent) of those questioned believed their country was better off now, compared with 5½ percent who said it was well screwed. We don't know what the remaining 1½ percent think, as Mrs Reza Mahoud and her seven-year-old son Mustapha have unexpectedly left the country for a remote island somewhere in the Caribbean after having called President Bush a 'self-seeking little scumbag'. Aneedah Fagh, a seventeen-year-old student from Baghdad, proudly showed us a bedroom plastered with posters of Britney Spears, Brad Gitt and Shrek. Aneedah (34-23-35), has painful memories of life in Iraq before she awoke to the American dream — a life without Diet-Cola, Burger King or Fox News. Three years ago her father was Iraq's ambassador to Kyrghystan — or some other unpronounceable place, and they lived in a home with an inside toilet and even had their own camel. But after war broke out, she and her family moved back to Baghdad — and a squalid life in a rented tent behind Saddam Hussein's squash court. Aneedah was unstinting in her praise of the improvements the American liberators had wrought in her backward country. "I am so grateful to Mr Bush," gushed the gabbling girl.
"Before they came, eighteen of us used to live in that tent. I
had to travel 194 miles to Uni with five other students on the back
of a smelly donkey, and when I got there we only had one turban-wearing
teacher who taught us how to knit shagpile rugs and count sheep. Baghdad
was a mean little shantytown with dirt roads and only five shops —
and three of those sold burqas. Now we have modern, six-lane
superhighways with Amoco gas stations every three miles and drive-in
burger bars where you can eat with plastic forks; it's so kewl!" But not all the Iraqis we met were quite so enthusiastic about the
liberation of their third-rate country by a first-rate superpower bent
on introducing them to a second-class lifestyle. We spoke to Shaniah
Shariyah, a devout Shi'ite and mother of twenty-seven from southern
Iraq. Although wearing the burqa traditionally protects Muslim
women from 'impertinent eyes', it has not protected Baghdad broads from
the greater impertinence of having their bottoms pinched by sex-starved
squaddies from Scunthorpe. We were shocked to discover that Muslim girls
who appeared in public with only the whites of their eyes showing were
more likely to be harassed by US servicemen than provocative young women
wearing skimpy miniskirts and clinging crop-tops. An angry construction engineer echoed Shaniah Shariyah's opposition
to the US occupation. Osama Baksheesh (36) has lost a lucrative bridge-building
contract to a US construction outfit and been reduced to polishing the
shoes of passing British squaddies outside a seedy Halal sandwich bar.
He was scathing in his condemnation of the US occupation. At that point the engineer became abusive and we were forced to beat
a hasty retreat. It was a common sentiment everywhere we went. In Sulaymaniyah a young girl clutching two fifty dollar bills trailed after three Americans as they left one of the new lap-dancing clubs springing up everywhere, smiling shyly and repeating over and over, "Thank you, thank you!" Comment on this story? Click the button to have your say. © 2004 utterpants.co.uk |