BY JAMES TARANTO
Monday, June 2, 2003 12:50 p.m. EDT
'It Was About Oil'
Germany's development minister, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, has joined "a chorus of criticism in Europe" over coalition forces' failure thus far to find substantial stocks of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Associated Press reports from Berlin. "We see in the current discussion that it was about oil, it wasn't about weapons of mass destruction," she declares.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports from Baghdad that "two Iraqi brothers made their home a prison for 23 years to escape execution by Saddam Hussein's security forces, seeing daylight only after his fall." Their 67-year-old mother, identified in the report only as Zahra, says that "her husband, pregnant daughter and another son had already been executed as suspected members of the Shi'ite Muslim Daawa Party." She hid her surviving sons, Saad and Ibrahim--now 45 and 39--in a room in her house, keeping the secret even from the family's closest relatives despite constant harassment from Saddam's "security" forces:
The brothers finally emerged from hiding a week after Saddam's fall on April 9, when they were sure U.S. forces had really conquered Iraq.
"Freedom is so very important. I can't express the feelings that overwhelmed me when I finally went out on the streets. My old friends were shocked when they saw me," Ibrahim said. . . .
"I was so relieved. It was the first night in 23 years that I had a good night's sleep," Zahra said, wiping away tears.
Boy, will she be mad when she finds out it was about oil.
URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110003574
URL:http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/P/Memb... |
