al-Reuters is reporting the population of Iraq has discovered a new problem since their liberation for Saddam. They’re getting FAT and oh the horrors – have become couch potatos!
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Starved of entertainment in their violence-racked city, many Baghdad residents are turning to food as one of their few remaining pleasures, and paying the price as they pile on the pounds.
Anecdotal evidence suggests many are eating out of boredom or stress, but Iraqis, not traditionally a nation of calorie counters, have an unhealthy, oil-soaked diet that combined with a lack of exercise makes gaining weight all too easy.
The obvious conclusion? It’s Bush’s fault!
“During Saddam’s time I used to go to the market, visit friends or just go walking in the district, but I’m too afraid to do that now,” said Nada, 33, a chemist whose weight seesawed before the war but is now an average of 7 kg (15.43 lb) overweight.
See… I wasn’t kidding, it’s Bush’s fault Iraqis are eating like pigs and appearing like an Arabic version of the late John Candy in a head scarf.
Hmmm… I wonder what excuse this chemist used during Saddam’s reign of terror when his weight hit the top end of that “seesaw?” It appears to me he has had a continuing weight problem.
Of course there is another side to this coin.
Baghdad gym store owners are claiming that more “people buying home fitness equipment,” a desire for fittness that has been “fueled by exercise shows broadcast on state and satellite television.”
al-Reuters fails to explain there were no gym stores under Saddam and no home fitness equipment to be purchased. They also miss the fact during Saddam Hussein’s reign, only Iraqi Satellite Channel and two land channels, Iraq and Shabab (Youth), were permitted. Owning satellite dishes was not permitted then and violators were penalized by confiscating the receiving devises, fine and detention for up to six months.
The Kurds have two satellite channels. They are Kurdistan channel associated with the Kurdish Democratic Party led by Massoud Barazani and Kurdistan TV.
Some channels are broadcast from Egypt and the UAE. While others cater to the minority population such as Turkman Iely of Turkmans. Somarian and Ishtar channels, which broadcast 40 percent of their programs in Surrian language, cater to Assyrian viewers.
So it would seem the true fault lays at the feet of freedom and the plethora of TV channels available.
Iraqi Baghdad psychiatrist al-Harith Hassan offers another possible cause, “But Iraqis are pitifully ignorant about their diet, which is unhealthy,” said Hassan.
Indeed, consider this possible solution: On one, or more, of the several dozen of sat channels that didn’t exist before pump in Martha Stewart or the Richard Simmons shows.
The price of freedom, being fat assed pigs! The Iranians, Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians, to name a few, should have such “problems!”
