What do Iraqi's think of the occupation? Five Years On...

I can only find this taster of Charlie Rose's interview with two Iraqi's online, but Glenn Greenwald and Crooks and Liars have much more.



As Greenwald says:

The significance of the interview lies as much in what it says about the American occupation of Iraq as it what it illustrates about the American media. In the American media’s discussions of Iraq, when are the perspectives expressed here about our ongoing occupation — views extremely common among Iraqis of all types and grounded in clear, indisputable facts — ever heard by the average American news consumer? The answer is: “virtually never.”

It's well worth going to Salon or Crooks and Liars and watching the entire segment. Here's a quote from the whole interview which is not on the clip which I managed to fnd:

ROSE: And obviously, what we want to accomplish on this fifth anniversary of the American invasion, or the coalition invasion of Iraq, is how they see it as Iraqis, five years later. Give me an assessment.

ALI FADHIL: That’s a big question, assessment. Well, basically, probably, I`ll kind of sum it in a few words.

It’s — we have a country where the government is not functioning after five years. We have too many internal problems. And we have the violence increasing day after day.

We have a huge crisis of refugees inside and outside Iraq. We have a total failure of the — of the civilian — the civilian structure and what’s happening inside. We have the sectarian divisions increasing. We didn’t have that before. Now we have it. So, basically, my assessment is we have a whole nation called Iraq, now it’s wiped out.

Click title to go to Greenwald's page.

Tags: Sinan Antoon, Ali Fadhil, Charlie Rose, Iraq war, occupation