This article was first published in August 2002 by AAASC.com correspondence, Tamara Odisho. Tamara is currently a Legislative Aide to California State Assemblymember Fran Pavely in Sacramento.
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The anniversary of September 11, 2001, is here. There are new tapes surfacing. The coverage of upcoming memorial services travel from news station to news station. The images of that morning still haunting: People crying, running, confused. Tons of debris layered like icing on a cake all over the most powerful streets in Manhattan, New York. The pictures of those who lost their lives flash on TV screens. The images of shoes laid out on the damaged and dirty Manhattan streets. Those same streets that were once filled with noisy cabs, and thousands of people going and coming, living their own lives, doing their own thing.

But on that day it all changed. It changed for all those people. It changed for the entire world. The constant replay of the images of those planes filled with innocent passengers crashing into tower 1 and then into tower 2. And when everyone thought the worst was over, and when it couldn’t possibly get any worse, yet the inevitable happened: Tower 2 collapsed and sent rolling hills of white smoke filled with debris and personal belongings of all those who were in that building to the skies of Manhattan. The white smoke overcame the streets, hushed the screams, and noise of those in the streets. There was silence; it almost seemed divine. As if we were all dying, walking together down that long white tunnel leading us to God. But then the smoke cleared. And there was no heaven, but hell.

ESHOO FIGHTS TO PROTECT CIVIL LIBERTIES IN U.S. PATRIOT ACT
Encourages U.S. backing of indigenous Christian population

WASHINGTON, DC -- Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto) today offered an amendment to H.R. 2601, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, to protect indigenous Christians in Iraq from continuing religious persecution and political exclusion. The amendment unanimously passed the House by a voice vote.

“Iraqi Christians welcome the opportunity to move beyond the days of repression and persecution,” said Eshoo. “They wish nothing more than to be able to fully cooperate and participate in the development of a democratic, pluralistic state, and the commitment provided by this amendment gives them great promise.”

Eshoo’s amendment urges the departments and agencies of the U.S. Government to pay special attention to the welfare of ChaldoAssyrians – an ancient population that predates current Iraqi inhabitants – and other Iraqi Christians, including Chaldeans, Jacobites, Armenians, Assyrians, and Greek Orthodox Christians, who have been the subject of great harassment and intimidation even after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The amendment also calls on the President and his administration to work with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to dedicate funding for the promotion of welfare and education, as well as the resettlement for these minority groups in Iraq.