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Baghdadee بغدادي

Arab American Soldier in Baghdad


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Salam...Greetings from Baghdad International Airport.

 

I'm an Arab American soldier here in Baghdad with the Army. I belong to a Civil Affairs unit here engaged in reconstruction work and would first off like to say I'm very enthused to see more and more Iraqis sharing their thoughts for the world community, and more importantly other Iraqis.

 

I'll post more later but I was hoping to get some help on two side projects. The first was seeing if Iraqis would be able to submit diaries of their experiences in Iraq in the last year, focusing on the war, reconstruction, their life...and their future dreams. I hope to send this back to people I know in the States (especially the Arab and Muslim American communities) to inspire them to get off their butts and come to Iraq to help this nation get back on its feet. Secondly I am in contact with an Iraqi American working for a organization that gets children in the US and other countries to participate in dialogue with one another. Teachers that have access to the internet would be of great value and I may be able to pull donations together to help pay for internet cafe access time here in Baghdad for interested teachers.

 

If you can hepl me out please email me at

mohammed.masry@us.army.mil

 

If you want to reach me by mail just give an envelope to any American soldier you see on the street, (no postage stamp needed from inside Iraq) with:

 

SGT OMAR MASRY

490 CIVIL AFFAIRS BN

APO AE 09335

 

THanks

(Please translate into arabic i dont have the software on this computer)

 

PS. I also have democracy/civic education guides (in arabic) that I would like help getting printed and sent out to schools (elementary-college level).

 

 

ALSO: I am working on trying to help out with a project to stock small libraries that will be put in womens centers soon to be built around Iraq. I would appreciate lists of books that would be needed as well as donations if possible. Thank You.

 

Translating Omer's:

ترجمه تعليق عمر

 

سلام.. تحيه من مطار بغداد الدولي.

انا عسكري عربي امريكي هنا في بغداد مع الجيش. انا انتمي لوحده الامور المدنيه المهتمه باعاده الاعمار وابدا بالقول انني مبتهج لرؤيه عدد اكثر من العراقيين يشاركون افكارهم مع العالم وكذلك بشكل اكبر اهميه , مع بقيه العراقيين.

سوف اساهم لاحقا بشكل اكبر ولكني اريد المساعده في مشروعين جانبيين: الاول ان اعرف اذا كان العراقيين يستطيعون نشر يومياتهم عن السنه الماضيه مركزين على الحرب, اعاده الاعمار , حياتهم وكذلك احلامهم للمستقبل. انا اامل ان ابعث ذلك الى امريكا( خصوصا الى الجاليات الاسلاميه والعربيه) لتحريكهم من ابراجهم العاجيه للمجى الى العراق لمساعد شعبه في الوقوف على قدميه.

ثانيا انا اعمل مع احد العرب الامريكان الذي يتشغل مع مؤسسه للمساعده على استضافه الشباب العراقيين في امريكا وبقيه الدول لعمل حلقات حواريه. المدرسين يمكن ان يكونوا عاملا مساعدا مهما هنا واستطيع جلب بعض التبرعات لكي نساهم بغطيه كلف الجلسات في مقاهي الانترنت للمدرسين الذين يرغبون بذلك.

اذا كنتم تستطيعزن المساعده ارجوا ارسال ايميل على

 

mohammed.masry@us.army.mil

 

اذا اردتم الكتابه لي , يمكنكم اعطاء اي جندي تروه بالشارع رساله لي معنونه الى

SGT OMAR MASRY

490 CIVIL AFFAIRS BN

APO AE 09335

 

 

شكرا

..لدي ايضا نشريات حول الديمقراطيه مترجمه للعربيه واريد المساعده في ان يتم طبعها لتوزيعها على المدارس و الكليات

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Welcome to the board Omar

 

I am in the US ( as most posters I would suspect ) and look forward to dialogs.

Not sure how familiar you are with the Blogs out there but this guy;

 

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/

 

He even wrote a book that spans prior to the build up of the war. A lot of humor in his Blog's.

 

this site;

http://tarjim.ajeeb.com/ajeeb/translate2.a...L=http%3A%2F%2F

 

Is a translation site.

 

you don't have to download or agree to any terms of service to translate English to Arabic.

 

For Arabic to English...well, thats another story.

 

Gotta run.

This is the last week of NFL regular season.

 

My team was out of it WEEKS ago.

 

 

good luck and keep posting dawg !CLE.gif ;)

 

 

BTW,

In case you want to have a look, this is an article I found interesting about some of the big picture problems over there.

Wide ranging plans for Iraq

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Salam...Greetings from Baghdad International Airport.

 

 

If you can hepl me out please email me at

mohammed.masry@us.army.mil

 

If you want to reach me by mail just give an envelope to any American soldier you see on the street, (no postage stamp needed from inside Iraq) with:

 

SGT OMAR MASRY

490 CIVIL AFFAIRS BN

APO AE 09335

 

THanks

(Please translate into arabic i dont have the software on this computer)

 

 

here ya go big Dawg :)

 

إذا استطعت هيبل أنا بالخارج من فضلك أرسلني بالبريد الألكترونيّ في

محمد .masry@us.army.mil

 

إذا أردت الوصول إليّ بالبريد فقط أعط مظروف لأيّ جنديّ أمريكيّ الذي تراه على الشّارع, ( لا طابع احتاج من داخل العراق ) مع :

 

إس جي تي عمر ماسري

490 بي إن شئون مدنيّة

ال09335 لأبو إي

 

الشّكرًا

( من فضلك يترجم في العربيّة أنا لدى دونت برامج على هذا الكمبيوتر )

English to Arabic translation site

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  • 3 weeks later...

Quoting the writer of the above letter to Omar

You appeal for school textbooks “preferably in Arabic.” Surely this hardly needs underlining. Iraqi children speak Arabic. Were England or America invaded and occupied by the Arabs, one would hope the occupiers were more sensible than to appeal for textbooks “preferably in English.”

 

Omar may reply better, but he was asking those who donates to some Iraqi women centers inside Iraq to send books. And he suggest to be in Arabic. Could any one let me know how this corelate to the above?

 

Might I correct you on a vital point Iraqis have resisted every attempt to take over their oil since its discovery. The Haifa pipeline from Kirkuk was mooted over sixty years ago, actually, by the British – the then occupiers – to supply oil to Israel.

So illetrate about Iraqi affairs.. Isreal was not established sixty years ago. The pipe line was the first by IPC to go through Jordan and Palestine " both were occupied by British" as was the more secure one at that time..Which was then replaced by Syrian and Turkish when Isreal established in 1948 becuase of the war.

 

As soon as the US invaded Iraq last March, the plans to restore this disastrous idea, which will lead to explosion after explosion and sabotage after sabotage, was stated as a US policy

Great discovery.. Let them first have the Iraqi government accept to bring the relations with Isreal as other Arabs did, then we might need to talk about such agressive plans. What a primitive one!

 

By the way, you talk of “smugglers stealing oil.” March’s madness was an illegal invasion. The oil belongs to Iraqis, not US and Halliburton etc.

Is the writer defending the right of smugllers.. She might be happy seeing Iraqis suffer. What is the relation between the two. Who other than the majority of Iraqis that were cel;ebrating the March war, better to give legitimicy to the war?

 

I sugget the writer to read more about iraq

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sargeant Masry,

 

I took a google through the “articles” of Felicity Arbuthnot, and checked her biographical information. She is either a tyrant-loving, America-hating, history re-writing, crack-pot scientist darling of the communist world, or a humanitarian (I can’t tell the difference anymore).

 

Having researched her history, I found it outrageous that she should call your credentials and motives into question. She is a self-proclaimed “expert” on Iraq by virtue of having been chauffeured around Iraq by one of Hussein’s best friends on many occasions since 1991. Her biographical information failed to mention where she went to university, or whether she achieved a degree in Arabic Studies, so I doubt she has done either.

 

Ms. Arbuthnot is an Irish-born British citizen, who worked for the UN in Iraq under Denis J. Halliday while he administered the UN Palaces for Food program. The UN paid a lot of money for oil in exchange for food and medicine to care for the Iraqi people. Since Ms. Arbuthnot worked for the UN under Denis Halliday administering this program in Iraq, she owes the world, and especially Iraqis, an explanation. Where is all the money the Iraqi people got for the oil they sold the UN? If not the money then where did the food go? Where did the medicine go? Why were the smuggling programs that contravened the US Oil for “Food” program left uninvestigated? Can she guess where that money went? That money belongs to the Iraqi people, and as an American, I’m pretty confident in saying, IT IS NOT IN MY POCKET. Certainly, it was not used to properly feed and care for the Iraqi people. So, where is it?

 

Regarding the content of her articles, they all sound a lot alike. All the world’s problems are, of course, America’s fault. Supposedly she spent a lot of time in Iraq during Hussein’s rule working as a “humanitarian”, yet I could not find one mean word about Saddam Hussein. I could find no comment against his regime’s systematic oppression, starvation and murder of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of the Iraqi people. No complaints about all the palaces he built and the lavish lifestyle he enjoyed while he and his proxies robbed, raped, shredded, starved, maimed and murdered the Iraqi people.

 

If Ms. Arbuthnot really cared for Iraqi’s, why would she bother attacking an Arab-American soldier who is building schools for the Iraqi children, and asking for book donations for Iraqi libraries? She has never bothered to speak against the documented atrocities of Saddam Hussein, but she attacks with hateful passion a man risking his life to give Iraqis a chance at a better one? If I were a less charitable person, I might think Felicity Arbuthnot’s name might be found on Hussein's money list.

 

Thank you Sergeant Masry for all your good work. Your progress is causing great distress to all the "humanitarians", “freelance journalists”, tyrants and terrorists who supported Saddam Hussein, so you must be doing something right.

 

Respectful regards,

Tom Penn

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Yesterday I was listening to another freelancer journalist by name ..Jamal on one of those Free stattions, talking from Baghdad.. It was shocking the extent that this Mr. Jamal is trying his best to probaganda for the suffering of Iraqis but in absolutely wrong direction..

While all Iraqis are blamming those terrorists , Mr. Jamal is simply saying that Americans are the one who are responsible by liberating Iraqis from the good life under Saddam..

I just talked to one of our brave Iraqis engineers who just returned back from Iraq. He is a canadian, after the war, he went to Iraq and choose to work for one of the US companies in building schools for Iraqi kids.. He spent the last six months managing the activities of this company in the three governates. He told me a lot of stories.. Some thing that Mr. Jamal would not like. There is a huge amount of work that is going on ..Hope have time to tell more about it..

 

Srg. Mesri.. One simple word..

What you are doing , is a great job that humanity and Iraqis would keep considering for long long time..

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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest AbuMohammed

Hi...

 

I am Abu Mohammed

 

After I left my country for about 23 years and live in Canada for long time, I visited Iraq after the freedom from saddam regime and i worked with one of the American organization to rebuilt Iraq, since I’m civil engineer in a master degree level. I had worked with them for just 3 months because i have to come back to my family in Canada, I were not prepared to stay all the time in Iraq, you know.

 

There were too many good things this organization is doing like they are really working hard to rebuild whatever they can do, like school, roads, medical centres...ets renovation and some times rehabilitation, for example, they really working hard, they rebuilt more than 50 schools in about just 2 months and if you had a look on the schools before they worked on, it is really miserable; no windows (imagine what will happen in winter time), broken class room doors, the floors of the classrooms are totally gone, illumination: no, the drinking water for the pupils is a contaminated water due to the corrosion in the pipes

 

no computer in the principle office so he has to do every thing by his hand which take a lot of time and efforts, in brief …. There was nothing.

 

They rehabilitated and renovated all that big job in just 45-60 days

 

Beside that the organization moved to the very promote areas to give services to them; like water purification plants, electricity, supplying the medical centres with medical instruments and what medical staff needs. That were in the three states: HILLA, KERBALA, and NAJAF

 

 

 

 

 

. but i have notice that they are using in their staff a non Iraqi Arab people which most of them like saddam and hate American in spite of they are working within an American organization and the American paying them a very good salary, they like saddam and they hate the SHIETT Moslem because they are against him, and in many occasion they say that ().

 

This is one, number two,they are not dealing with my people Iraqi in a nice or as a human being, and i have too many proof for that if you like i can e-mail to you more about that.

 

I am asking why the American depend on such kind of people while they are not even welcomed from the people in Iraq, because the Iraqi people do not like these nationalities since they know that they are with saddam and they support saddam before and now and they have a very bad experience with them during saddam regime, beside that, that will reflect a non positive ideas on the Americans when the people in Iraq looking that the American are making use of these Arab nationalities to rebuild their country in the mean time the same people were up to yesterday one of saddam regime tool to kill the Iraqis in one way or the other. They cost the organization a big amount of money and as you now this money comes from either the tax payers or from the donations and in both cases i do not thing that the people who gives this money like that since there are Iraqi people can do the same jobs and duties with much less cost.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Talal

Dear Abu Mohammed,

Could you please tell me the website or address of this American organisation, because i want to see if i can work for them. I also want to know the salary they pay. I also want to know why they treat Iraqis differently. Do you think they are afraid of some Iraqis to cause troubles or maybe the Iraqis would not want someone to tell them what to do. Maybe some Americans have some bad experiences with some Iraqi workers in the past. I wish you can find the time to answer my questions. Thank you Abu Mohammed.

T.

my email is talsharifi@yahoo.com

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello Abu Mohammed,

 

I am not surprised that you find actual enemies of Iraqi freedom in American 'aide' organizations. Like your country, that has people who want to defeat a free Iraq, many Americans are just as much an enemy as any Al Qaeda member - by virtue of the fact that they will do anything in their minor power to undermine a bright future for the people of Iraq.

 

But, their efforts have failed, and will continue to fail, as they become exposed for what they are. To me, they are traitors, not only to America – but to the very people they claim they want to help. Fortunately, the contradiction they represent is so transparent that your countrymen will soon drive them from Iraq – and Americans will help!

 

Expose the name of the organization - and we will do what needs to be done! :)

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Translating Ron's

مرحبا ابو محمد

لااستغرب ان تجد من اعداء حريه العراق من يعمل مع المنضمان الامريكيه. كما هو الحال مع بلدكم , فان هناك البعض ممن يحاول ان يوقف حريه العراق, بعض الامريكان هم اعداء بنفس القدر الذي هم فيه اعضاء القاعده.- انطلاقا من حقيقه انهم يفعلوا مابوسعهم لعرقله المستقبل الباهر للعراقيين.

ولكن كل مساعيهم ستفشل وستستمر بالفشل, كلما انكشفت اعمالهم. بالنسبه لي هم خونه, ليس لامريكا فقط ولكن ايضا لهذا الشعب الي يدعون مساعدته. لحسن الحظ فا تناقضهم مكشوف بحيث يستطيه ابناء بلدك دفعهم خارج البلاد قريبا. وامريكا ستكون في عونكم.

اكشف اسمائهم ومنضماتهم وسنحاول ان نفعل ما مطلوب معهم.

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  • 2 weeks later...

What a great site! Glad to add a few of my favorite Iraqi bloggers:

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/

http://iraqataglance.blogspot.com/

http://www.healingiraq.com/

http://roadofanation.blogspot.com/

http://www.messopotamian.blogspot.com/

 

The diversity of the blogs I've found in Iraq are amazing! All are apparently highly educated and their observations are fascinating, especially when sitting here in safe and sound American territory!

 

God Bless you for your efforts, Omar! Keep up the good work, and be safe.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest kevin

I'd like to say after being in Iraq that they probably use foreigners because you don't run the risk of them working with local terrorists.

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Guest Guest_tajer

Kevin,

That is to assume that those Arabs anti Iraqi freedom are less likely to be terrorist than a fellow Iraqi.

Polls had proven that more than 70% Arabs are against the liberation while more than 70% Iraqis are with..

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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest young america

As the oil goes, while I don't theink the US should be 'stealing' Iraqi oil, Once an Iraqi government is set up, oil is a great option for paying the US for aid. BTW, for anyone who might know, has the US gov. ever thought about/acted upon allowing corporations to aid in the rebuilding of Iraq (e.g. Microsoft might send computers, knowing that if more Iraqis use windows OS computers, they may buy them later) while that may not be a good example you should get the idea.

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