Reply #21: Is that so? [View All]

[Columbia]

Healthcare was readily available to ALL Iraqis under the Saddam regime and even pointed to internationally as a model for other countries...UNTIL Desert Storm and the sanctions imposed by the US-led UN action. These sanctions imposed a heavy toll on the healthcare system of Iraq as well as the education system.

Yup, Saddam was so strapped for cash that he had to beg other countries to take oil vouchers worth billions for political favors.
Then he had to shift priorities from funding healthcare to building dozens of palaces and funnel away more billions to his private coffers for the public good.

Under Saddam, the Iraqis held the distinction of being the most literate country in the ME (even including Israel) and among the top in the world. The Iraqi women were well educated and visible participants in the government (wheter you like the government or not).

Like I said, how else are you going to indoctrinate the youth if they can't read the state-approved propaganda/schoolbooks praising Papa Saddam and how he heroically defeated the Persians and the United States in the great wars?

Iraq was not the only country have "dissidents" disappear, including the US. All across South America thousands of dissidents were killed by US-backed dictatorships. Our hands are as dirty as Saddams'.

Ah, the old "But Johnny was bad too, so why can't I be bad?" Sorry, Sara, that doesn't work for right-wingers justifying war-crimes against the Iraqis and it won't work for Saddam apologists justifying his human right violations.

Iraq was a secular state but religion was practiced freely, it just was not supported by the state. It was probably more religiously free under Saddam than the US is now under the RW-taliban

Ah, yes, they were so much more free when Saddam barred the Shia from making a pilgrimage to Karbala for 25 years and openly practicing devotion to their Prophet Hussein (no relation). Let me know the next time you get arrested going to Easter Mass, kay?