"Bush is a bloodsucker"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, Apr. 12, 2003
At a Tea Shop in Cairo, Disbelief at War Reports
By SUSAN SACHS

CAIRO, April 12 ? They just do not believe it.

Those Iraqis who stamped and spit on the fallen statue of Saddam Hussein? 
Those were Kurds maybe, but not Arabs, insisted the men of Nasr Street, 
sipping sweet tea on the sidewalk on a sunny afternoon.

"I'm sure the Iraqi people did not do that themselves," said Hamdi Mahmoud, 
a Cairo accountant who was relaxing in a loose chocolate-colored robe on 
his day off. "Millions loved Saddam."

American marines welcomed in central Baghdad? Another clever fabrication, 
his friends agreed. "The media must be hiding something," said Hanafi Abu 
Saleh, a television repairman. "If Iraqis are so happy, why are they still 
fighting?"

It was Friday afternoon in the Imbaba section of central Cairo, and the men 
were in their usual chairs at the Saafan tea shop.

The butcher sliced meat from a haunch of beef hanging in his doorway. 
Clothes flapped in the breeze on the balconies like multicolored flags. 
Cars honked as they passed donkeys pulling carts piled high with fragrant 
fresh garlic or watermelons.

Far away in Washington, President Bush was proclaiming the liberation of 
Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling Arabs that the 
televised images from Baghdad were proof that "America is a friend to the 
Arab people."

The men at the cafe were having none of it. The images they remembered from 
satellite television and Egyptian stations during the war left an entirely 
different impression.

"After the Egyptian people have seen this, all this killing of women and 
children, they think that Bush is a bloodsucker," said Mr. Mahmoud, a 
forceful speaker who was convinced that the United States would never be 
trusted in the region.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/international/worldspecial/13ARAB.html

Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org