IRAQI EX-PATRIOTS HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE GO-AHEAD to return to Iraq today, according to a news item my wife just heard on KCBS radio. (One gentleman, who was thrown out of Iraq 30 years ago for being a dissident, and who recently studied at the Naval Post Graduate College at Monterey left today via SFO.) I’ll have more if I can find a link to a news article.
UPDATE: Here’s the news article, from the KCBS Web site:
An Iraqi refugee who now lives in Monterey has been summoned by the Iraqi National Congress to help establish a civilian government in his home country once the war is over.
KCBS reporter Margie Shafer says Akeel Taee left Iraq in 1977 after being tortured by Iraqi state police for belonging to a dissident student union.
He has been studying defense resource management at the Naval Post Graduate school in Monterey and is now headed to Qatar anticipating the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
“I really would like to see a transitional government established right away,” Taee said. “We need this operation to be finished.”
Taee spoke to KCBS before boarding a plane to Qatar via London.
He said once Saddam’s regime is toppled. “then we will see all the solutions for all of our problems, ethnic and minority culture and the sharing of the power.”
Taee told KCBS he is confident different Iraqi ethnic groups can peacefully coexist after Saddam is gone.
People “always work together, and nobody really tries to have a conflict,” he said. “We never have a conflict within Iraqi society, even during the last 200 or 300 years.”
Taee is one of 200 members of the Iraqi National Congress invited to help US Central Command set up a transitional government.
Taee’s family will stay in London while he works on the new government.
UPDATE: Here’s more, via the Drudge Report.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member