re: some people were reporting on this before 9-11.
Abu Mustafa had spent five years in the army in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, manning a ground-to-air missile battery outside Basra.
After fleeing Iraq in 1998, he arranged for US$1,500 paid in Kurdistan for
his wife and two children to join him here. Today, four days before leaving for a new life in Idaho, he still cannot understand the minds of his tormentors.
"They're cruel, they love power. They act like this because this is how they are, it's their character. Of course, firstly I blame Saddam for all this. But I also blame the great powers and the West, because they allowed Saddam and his regime to stay in Iraq for their own interests."