Sharon Stone laments U.S. policies on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraqi deaths

The Canadian Press
February 18, 2008

CAIRO, Egypt – Hollywood icon Sharon Stone believes the Sept. 11, 2001 bombings of the United States should not have been used as a pretext to launch the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to comments published Monday in a Saudi-owned newspaper.

The actress said in an interview with the Al Hayat daily that she fails to understand how the American public supported those wars to start with, only to denounce their fallout later. She also bemoaned what she called America’s decision to ignore the deaths of so many Iraqis.

“When we choose war, we should understand that we choose murder, bloodletting and torture,” Stone told the newspaper.

“I feel at great pain when the spotlight is on the death of 4,000 American soldiers, while 600,000 Iraqi deaths are ignored . . . War is not a movie, it is a tragedy of dead bodies, victims, the disabled, orphans, widows and the displaced.”

Stone spoke in English and her comments were translated and published in Arabic. An English transcript of the interview was not available.

Al Hayat published only excerpts of the interview, done in December when Stone attended the fourth Dubai International Film Festival in the United Arab Emirates. The paper’s sister publication, Leha, was to publish the entire interview Wednesday.

Stone said she came to the region seeking answers for herself because the U.S. media have failed to provide Americans with the truth and have distorted it instead.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 7:00 am

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