Iraqi Christians were safer under Saddam, says Vatican official

[Flabbergasted]

Iraqi Christians were safer under Saddam, says Vatican official

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Although Iraq has a democratic government, Iraqi Christians were safer and had more protection under former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, said the future head of the Vatican's interreligious dialogue council.

During the buildup to the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who will become head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue Sept. 1, had criticized the U.S. government's plan of preventative war and said a unilateral war against Iraq would be a "crime against peace."

In a recent interview with the Italian magazine 30 Giorni, the cardinal said his early criticisms had been prophetic.

"The facts speak for themselves. Alienating the international community (with the U.S. push for war) was a mistake," he said in the magazine's Aug. 10 issue. A copy of the interview was released in advance to journalists.

He said an "unjust approach" was used to unseat Saddam from power, resulting in the mounting chaos in Iraq today.

"Power is in the hands of the strongest -- the Shiites -- and the country is sinking into a sectarian civil war (between Sunni and Shiite Muslims) in which not even Christians are spared," he said.

Christians, "paradoxically, were more protected under the dictatorship," he said.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0704487.htm

[Recursion]

1. I remember some surprise when I gave my unit's "playing card" briefing...

...going over the list of the most wanted (the logic of assigning that to a buck sergeant seemed to be that since dmesg speaks Arabic he must be an expert on every question regarding Iraqi government and society): they had no idea the list would include women and Christians, particularly a Christian as highly ranked as Aziz (where the hell is Aziz now, anyways?). I tried to explain how Saddam was a Stalinist who was trying very hard to erase secular and ethnic distinctions in his society, and that he promoted women to high places to frustrate pan-Islamists, and that there would be hell to pay if after the invasion we didn't manage that question as carefully as he had. Too bad the SecDef wasn't saying that sort of thing, and was firing 3-stars who did...

[Flabbergasted]

3. The US media has done a great job keeping the American public uninformed? nt

[The Stranger]

2. No, but according to the U.S. Christian War Cult, those people aren't really "Christians"

They haven't said the right things in the right order and pledged to fund more hate, torture and war in the name of Jesus.

[goodgd_yall]

4. Yeah, and women had it better under Saddam too

unless you were Shiite, I suppose, since that was the group that was the main object of oppression under Saddam. But even if Saddam had nothing to do with it, Shiite women would have been oppressed by their own men since they are very conservative in their views of women.

[stevedz313]

5. .

.