Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (9309)	2/17/2003 1:29:46 PM
From: Nikole Wollerstein	Respond to of 25898

"Do not use the Iraqi people as a pawn in your game for moral superiority - when you allow a monster like Saddam to rule for 30 years without so much as protesting against his rule, you lose the right to such a claim." An Iraqi student found herself in the spotlight Sunday after Tony Blair seized upon an e-mail she sent to friends telling them about Saddam's atrocities, including the "disappearance" of 17 members of her family. Rania Kashi, 19, a first-year student at Cambridge University, sent the long e-mail to about 15 friends who were considering going on Saturday's protest march in London. She wrote: "This may be hard to believe, and you may not even appreciate the extent of such barbaric acts, but believe me you will be hard pressed to find a single family in Iraq which has not had a son/father/brother killed, imprisoned, tortured and/or 'disappeared' due to Saddam's regime." One of her uncles was tortured after being caught trying to escape. Before sending the e-mail, she let her father, Dhiaa, a businessman, check the facts. It was his decision to forward his daughter's e-mail to some friends that led to its rapid rise from private missive to key political tool. The e-mail was quoted in a speech by the Prime Minister at Labour's conference in Glasgow after a copy was given to him by a group of Iraqis in Scotland on Saturday morning. A copy has subsequently been published on the No 10 website. In her e-mail Miss Kashi wrote: "Whatever America's real intentions behind an attack, the reality on the ground is that the majority of Iraqis, inside and outside Iraq, support the invasive action, because they are the ones who have to live with the realities of continuing as things are." She continued: "I say to them [the protesters]: do not continue to allow the Iraqi people to be punished because you are 'unhappy' with the amount of power America is allowed to wield in a faulty world. "Do not use the Iraqi people as a pawn in your game for moral superiority - when you allow a monster like Saddam to rule for 30 years without so much as protesting against his rule, you lose the right to such a claim." >>>How very true!!! Miss Kashi's father, his wife, Nadia, and their young son, Hesham, now 21, fled Iraq in the 1980s. They sought refuge in Kuwait, where Miss Kashi was born, and left for Britain four years later.