Iraqi Point of View

Many Iraqis found bitter irony in President Bush's insistence last week that Syria must withdraw from Lebanon before it holds elections, for Iraqis have lived with foreign tanks in their streets for two years and voted barely a month ago under the watchful eye of the U.S. Army.

"He must have forgotten that his army is occupying Iraq," said Sa'ad Abdul Aziz, 21, an engineering student at Baghdad University. "What about the Republican Palace that they are using as a U.S. embassy?"

. . . "America should get out of Iraq immediately and without conditions, just like it is asking neighboring Syria to withdraw from the Lebanese Republic," said Sheikh Nasir Al-Saidi, imam of a mosque in the restive Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, in a front-page article Saturday in the newspaper Azzaman.

. . . "For us it is a joke said by the U.S. president," Ahmed Mushref, 25 an English literature student in Al-Mustansyria University in Baghdad. "I am not defending Syria, but this is the truth."

"What Bush said is an insult and a joke at the same time," said Wissam Hashim, an engineering professor at Al-Anbar University. "He is condemning himself."

Thanks to Needlenose.