"I hope the U.S. Army will leave Iraq soon and we will have free elections, free government and a free future for the people of Iraq," Ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri said as he left to take a flight to Paris en route to the Syrian capital, Damascus. "I am leaving because I don't think there is a possibility for me to work as I want from a country that is militarily invading Iraq, destroying, ravaging and killing," he said. "I don't think that this occupied country (Iraq) will allow me to work with full freedom at the United Nations. Because I fear pressure to which I might be subjected, I have chosen to quit with honor and dignity... It's a country that occupies Iraq, from the North to the South, from East to West," he said on the Arabic-channel Al-Arabiya.
Al-Douri said his priority was to locate his family in Iraq, whom he had not heard from since the U.S.-led invasion began on March 20. "You know I have no information on my family from the beginning of the war," Al-Douri said just before he left his Upper East Side home with a police escort for New York City's John F. Kennedy Airport.
Too bad about that. Maybe you should have thought about it before sticking your chin and and hollering "hit me, hit me!" |