Thursday, November 6, 2003 Deleting Iraq's
History by Bob
Allen ACCORDING to a November 4
Christian
Science Monitor
article the new US-approved textbooks for Iraqi
school children effectively eliminate the history
of modern Iraq. According to the article the imperial edition of
Iraqi history deletes "any content considered
'controversial,' including the 1991 Gulf War; the
Iran-Iraq war; and all references to Israelis,
Americans, or Kurds." Another subject written out
the textbooks is the UN sanctions on Iraq. US officials and members of the occupation's
Ministry of Education worked on the revisions in a
series of meetings over the summer at UNESCO and
UNICEF offices. "Entire swaths of 20th-century
history have been deleted," says Bill Evers,
a US Defense Department employee who worked on the
new edition. Fuad Hussein, an Iraqi
expatriate working for the US in Iraq, headed up
the US occupation's Ministry of Education
participation in the project. He says, "We considered anything anti-American
to be propaganda and we took it out... In some
cases, we had to remove entire chapters." Ever mindful to respect the national sovereignty
of Iraqis, the article describes the intervention
of US State Department and Pentagon in the editing
process as playing "a limited role - unless things
go in a direction they don't approve." Gregg Sullivan, spokesman for the Near
Eastern Affairs Bureau of the State Department
describes it this way: "We'd hope it's only an
advisory role, but if something develops that's
disadvantageous to the Iraqi people, we'd weigh in
on a stronger level." 
Christian Sciecne Monitor article Turning
the page on Iraq's history-
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