With pro-Saddam & anti-US references deleted, Iraqi textbooks kinda thin

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1104/p11s01-legn.html

Turning the page on Iraq's history

As revised history books roll off Iraq's presses this month, some critics charge that they have moved from one-sided to 'no-sided.'

By Christina Asquith | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD – For 15 years, high school history teacher Abtsam Jassom has dutifully taught 20th-century history according to the Baath Party. In it, America was the greedy invader, every Iraqi war was justified and victorious, and Zionists were the cause of world suffering.

Now, however, with the ouster of former President Saddam Hussein, US officials say teachers will finally be free to teach a more factual account of historical events. But the question is: Whose account will that be?

The first indicator of what a Saddam-free education will look like is arriving this month, as millions of newly revised textbooks roll off the printing presses to be distributed to Iraq's 5.5 million schoolchildren in 16,000 schools. All 563 texts were heavily edited and revised over the summer by a team of US-appointed Iraqi educators. Every image of Saddam and the Baath Party has been removed.

But so has much more - including most of modern history. Pressured for time, and hoping to avoid political controversy, the Ministry of Education under the US-led coalition government removed any content considered "controversial," including the 1991 Gulf War; the Iran-Iraq war; and all references to Israelis, Americans, or Kurds.

"Entire swaths of 20th-century history have been deleted," says Bill Evers, a US Defense Department employee, and one of three American advisers to the Ministry of Education.

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[DuctapeFatwa]

1. What's the problem? How much history do they need to know

to take a bullet?

[DUreader]

2. They are consistent, same procedure as Afghanistan

well actually the Afg. textbooks may have been reissued from the US

where they originally came from, but with the weapons and military

lessons blacked out.