I need a list of facts about what it was like in Iraq before the 2003 invasion

[goodboy]

Such as religious freedom, women's and gay rights, status of infrastructure (despite sanctions)

Thanks.

[shraby]

1. An older encyclopedia should provide you with that

information..or a good share of it...like one from the 1960 or 1970s decades.

[Fumesucker]

2. If you want this list to argue with a right winger then just save your efforts..

They're not going to believe anything you say anyway no matter how much documentation you might provide.

Been there, done that, never even got a tee shirt.

[Poboy]

3. This would be instructive and informative to review and compare.

[mmonk]

4. There is this also.

Interesting article on how we have left Iraq

[stray cat]

5. Not heaven and not hell - unless you got negative attention from leaders or were shiite

[GodlessBiker]

6. There were no random bombings and the electrical service was fairly regular.

[polly7]

7. Google 'Riverbend, Baghdad Burning', by the girl blogger from Iraq.

She often wrote of what life was like.
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

You'll have to go right back in the archives to find a lot of it.

"Thursday, August 28, 2003

The Promise and the Threat
The Myth: Iraqis, prior to occupation, lived in little beige tents set up on the sides of little dirt roads all over Baghdad. The men and boys would ride to school on their camels, donkeys and goats. These schools were larger versions of the home units and for every 100 students, there was one turban-wearing teacher who taught the boys rudimentary math (to count the flock) and reading. Girls and women sat at home, in black burkas, making bread and taking care of 10-12 children.

The Truth: Iraqis lived in houses with running water and electricity. Thousands of them own computers. Millions own VCRs and VCDs. Iraq has sophisticated bridges, recreational centers, clubs, restaurants, shops, universities, schools, etc. Iraqis love fast cars (especially German cars) and the Tigris is full of little motor boats that are used for everything from fishing to water-skiing.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that most people choose to ignore the little prefix ‘re’ in the words ‘rebuild’ and ‘reconstruct’. For your information, ‘re’ is of Latin origin and generally means ‘again’ or ‘anew’.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_archive.html


"The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn't enough, apparently- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It's time for America to physically divide and conquer- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas".

I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq's history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven't been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.

I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night."

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_archive.html




Also, Iraqi women were free to study, become doctors, lawyers, wear anything they liked. Iraq had the top hospital in the ME, food co-ops fed those who needed it and despite sanctions, Iraq was nowhere near the destroyed nation it is now. Ordinary people in the different sects married one another, lived as neighbours, worked together, got along .......... it's all in her writings. The manufactured civil war destroyed that, too. If you are interested, please read these archives, they tell so much. Possibly she'll be disregarded by many as her blog does not contain facts and figures from U.S. studies and sources, they are her own observatioins as a citizen of Iraq.

I hadn't reread any of her articles for a long time, they're even harder to read now, knowing that nothing will be done about these horrors.

[Arkansas Granny]

8. You might find some of the info you're looking for in the Brookings Institute

Iraq Index. I've found it to have some of that information in comparison to pre-war Iraq.

http://www.brookings.edu/saban/iraq-index.aspx

[pipi_k]

9. Maybe. But then...

Dubya would have missed out on a shining moment

[Igel]

10. Good luck.

Nobody's going to have one for you.

Before the war, the West spun things (so did Iraq). Same for after the war. Iraq would point out the good things to one audience, the bad things when he could elicit support by blaming the evil West for his plight. Iraqis did the same thing.

But the first question is, "Which war?" Iraq's had three of recent import.

A lot of what's said in praise of Iraq dates to pre-Iran/Iraq war times. Good schools, great infrastructure, purely secular government in a modern nation-state. The Iran war squashed much of it. Saddam, a good student of Stalin, picked up one of Stalin's tricks: If the population, if your base, is religious, be religious during wartime to perk up support. So the secular Saddam added an Islamic phrase to the national flag, copied (or had copied) a Qur'aan in his blood, built lots of mosques. This ramped up interreligious envy as Shi'ite prayer halls were made into Sunni mosques. Saddam was afraid when a nation that was nearly 1/2 Shi'ite was fighting a Shi'ite country. Then, in the '90s, he turned to tribes and the move away from considering yourself first as a member of a tribe and clan to calling yourself just "Iraqi" was reversed: Tribal names were more important and tribes (esp. Sunni) were paid.

Both the increased religiosity and tribalism told on the people. In Baghdad, not so much. Women's rights? They weren't officially rolled back. They suffered. Religious freedom? Sure. Sort of. But the oppression wasn't citizen-on-citizen, it was government-on-citizen, which means it was impersonal, managed, and ripped society into big chunks in controlled ways. Post-2003 it was personal, unmanaged, and citizen-on-citizen. Nobody feared authority.

Then there's what's said before the 2003 war. Things were better than in 2005. That's true. If you don't add, "but weren't great, having declined for 20 years" you're not telling the whole truth. And there's more partial truth: Baghdad's electrical provisioning is taken to be equal to Basra's and al-Kut's electrical provisioning, when as electrical production declined more and more was funned to where Saddam needed it. Baghdad, lit up 24/7; al-Kut, a couple of hours a day. Hospitals were better in Baghdad than in al-Kut, better in al-Kut than in smaller Shi'ite towns. Sunni areas got money and subsidies? We wrongly assume that Shi'a and Kurdish areas did too. Very Soviet, all of this. Or Nigerian. Limited resources go to the important people first.

Then there's the confusing of non-war with peace, Tito's dilemma. Tito kept power by being oppressive to everybody, but less so to those that were in his pocket. So not only did Tito essentially bribe a big portion of the population, his power base, but he kept the groups gently seething at each other but at peace as he distributed favors to keep a certain level of envy, to keep interethnic rivalries from disappearing over the course of a generation or two. Tito came by this trick honestly--Ivan IV had it, Stalin knew it, Assad practiced it, the Ottomans excelled at it.


Some links: Keep in mind the likely spin.

http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/sector-food.html (and other links from that page); problem is, I'm not sure of the date of publication. It seems to always bear the current date.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/26/world/middleeast/26baghdad.html?pagewanted=2 Deals with K-12 education.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/nov2002/iraq-n04.shtml From 2002, it'll have the opposite spin. It's also a partial truth: Sanctions didn't have to be so bad, there was a lot of materials bought and not allowed into Iraq by Saddam; there were billions in unspent oil-for-food money with no reason to spend it.

ON edit:
Add a link:
http://www.think-twice.org.uk/2002/barr/