I hope Saddam and his sons are all dead, dead, dead...
Azad is a man with relatives in harms way and he supports this war. I worked with Azad on a software project at U.S. Steel from 1988 through 1992. The last I talked to him, he was working to get his family out of Iraq and was able to get his mother and sister to Ireland. His brother was in the Iraqi military stationed in the north of Iraq. I am not sure about his father but I think it is not good.
For a Kurd who's now an American, it's 'time for peace'
Thursday, April 10, 2003
By Sally Kalson, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Since the war in his homeland began, Azad Ali has been glued to the television 10 hours a day. This week he finally saw what he was looking for: the fall of Baghdad, symbolized by American soldiers occupying the Presidential Palace.
"That's when I thought the end is near," said Ali, 47, a Kurd who came to Pittsburgh in 1982, six years before Saddam Hussein's Baath regime used chemical weapons to slaughter his fellow Kurds.
"I woke up today at 5 a.m. and saw the Shiite people in Baghdad marching and demonstrating," said Ali, a U.S. citizen who lives in Butler and whose relatives in Baghdad and Kurdistan were all reported alive and well as of last weekend.
"People finally felt safe enough to go out and burn Saddam's picture and destroy his statues," he continued. "I hope this will be the end of the Baath Party and the beginning of democratic transition for Iraq. And I hope Saddam and his sons are all dead, dead, dead, so this phase of history can be finished."
...
Ali, a Ph.D. student in information science who teaches at Robert Morris University and Butler County Community College, noted that the battle of Tikrit still loomed, and he predicted it will be bloody.
"Saddam is from Tirkit," he said. "So are the high government officials and most of the Republican Guard. It is much better defended than other cities, and they know they will face a grim future because they committed so many atrocities, people will want revenge. So in my estimation, they will fight to the end.
"I hope the American forces surround them soon. It is time for the peace to begin." |
