Revisionist History in Iraqi and U.S. Textbooks

Re “Iraqi Schools Are Running, but Textbooks Lag,” May 17: The report speaks to the problem that textbooks in Iraq still mention Saddam Hussein. More important, it seems, would be whether they are allowed to speak the truth. Will they speak of the Downing Street memo that describes how the Bush administration prompted a war to remove Saddam? Will they mention the tens of thousands of Iraqis who were killed to remove Saddam? Or will they mention that Iraqis now so hate their new American puppet government that they willingly commit suicide to attack American troops and other Iraqis seen to be supporting the Americans? And will they say how the American president falsely implicated Iraq in the 9/11 attacks on America to justify his immoral war?

I suspect none of this will make it into Iraqi textbooks (or American texts either); at least not as long as the American government is creating the history that goes into these books.

Eric Taylor

Sunland