Posted by Edward I. Baba from dialup-67.24.124.6.Dial1.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (67.24.124.6) on Monday, February 03, 2003 at 10:36PM :
Hello everyone. I would like to inform you of such annotations made by Mr. Tony Blankley of the Washington Times. He referred to Saddam as an "Assyrian Dunderhead"!! If you would like to read the entirety of the article, it is linked here. Also, I wrote a response to Mr. Tony Blankley. The following is the response:
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The Washington Times
3600 New York Ave., N.E.,
Washington, DC 20002
Sunday, February 02, 2003
ATTN: Mr. Tony Blankley
Dear Mr. Blankley,
I was outraged at your recent remarks regarding Saddam and the Assyrian nation. As a respected editor, I would expect that you should not and would not character assassinate the Assyrian nation by calling this ferocious fiend an Assyrian. You should do a background check on Saddam and the Assyrian nation. They do not and will not mix well. Let me give you some background information to try to assist you in understanding the immeasurable differences between the Assyrians and this evil man, Saddam.
In 1981, he enforced mandatory laws that stated that all Assyrians must register in the census as Arabs. Some Assyrians use many Jewish names, such as Isaac, David, Abraham, Simon, etc. and they also use Assyrian names, such as Ashur, Sargon, Ninos, etc. Saddam said, “The Jews are our enemies. You Assyrians with the Jewish names MUST change your name to one favored by me.”
In 1985, Saddam Hussein totally subjugated the Assyrian churches, which have been there for thousands of years. He placed a Baath Agent in the board of directors of the church in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul, and many other cities to leach information from the Assyrian community.
In the same year, he changed the Assyrians’ school’s names to Arabic names in all of the cities in Iraq that had Assyrian schools. He coerced a decree that the Assyrian teachers could not teach Aramaic (Old Assyrian language) to the students. He took over all of the Assyrian Associations and converted them to Arabic names and placed Baath Agents in the board of directors to scrutinize everything the Assyrians did.
In addition, that same year, he callously and viciously executed four Assyrian Democratic Movement (Opposition Force) members. He prohibited the Assyrian priests to bury them according to Assyrian Church tradition.
In 1988, Saddam threw cyanide compound gas on the Kurdish villages, which are neighboring the Assyrian villages. Do you think that the cyanide compound gas did not disperse to those in the environs, it just resided in only the Kurdish villages? Did you know that in the same year he bombarded all the Assyrian churches and villages, which existed almost 2000 years ago?
In 1991, he blatantly announced ethnic cleansing against the Assyrian people and other minorities residing in Iraq. Because of such psychosis, hitherto, thousands of Assyrians became and are becoming refugees and fleeing to Turkey, Jordan, and Syria for tranquility. Thus far, there are over 5,000 refugees still living in Amman, Jordan.
The Assyrian people converted to Christianity in the first century after Jesus Christ. They built a large number of churches in south of Turkey and north of Iraq. We are the first people to convert to Christianity. With all respect to the Muslim community, Saddam is a Muslim, which has a cosmic amount of dissimilarity with Christianity.
Last year, Saddam declared that he would build an irrigation system on the city of Ashur in order to obliterate our identity from Iraq. He had a fully thought out plan on how he would eradicate our history and raze our people in Iraq and then he would pompously proclaim that Assyria never existed.
Assyrians were and always will be the cradle of civilization. The Assyrians created the first alphabet; the first library of cuneiform text was of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal, which had Hammurabi’s Code, which is to this day used in the court of law. They had the most superlative mailing system of that time. The Assyrians invented the wheel and the wheeled fortresses, which are the ancestors of the modern tank used in warfare. Assyrians developed high medical practice, which was very efficient and Assyrian doctors used many types of medicine and performed sophisticated surgery, commonly eye surgery. They had the first ambulance service. The Assyrian mapmakers (cartographers) created the longitude and latitude grid system that we still use today to locate various areas of the globe.
Assyrians are one of the founding fathers of dignified civilization and Saddam is the annihilator of dignified civilization.
How dare you write such madness that Saddam, that atrocious scum is Assyrian? You owe this magnanimous Assyrian nation a public apology for debasing the Assyrian name. I have never heard in history of an Assyrian name being Saddam. Have you? Never, because Assyrians would never degrade themselves by calling themselves or their children Saddam, for he has tortured and brutally murdered the Assyrian harmless and innocent youth and community. He has raped us of our rights and has shown no mercy to the Assyrian people. This monstrous man has stripped us of our identity and butchered our future generation.
This is why I am here today living in this beautiful country, I say and call it with pride, America. This stupendous country has embraced us with compassion, love, and freedom. It permits us to freely preserve our identity, culture, tradition, and our Aramaic language. This exquisite country allows us to speak our mind and fight for our rights. It strives to protect us from all harm and has given a voice to the voiceless. I will always show gratitude towards America, the land of the free and the home of the braves.
God has always and will continue to bless America.
Sincerely,
Edward I. Baba
A Concerned Assyrian-American Citizen
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I would like to start a petition on these horrible annotations. Please e-mail me at: rageatm2000@msn.com and write your full name, city, state or province, and country. Thank you.
Yours in Assyrianism,
Edward I. Baba
-- Edward I. Baba
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