How's it Going in Iraq?

The war's over. Did you get the news.

 

the problems i have with stories like these:

1. one guy shoots up in the air at a funeral, among the most emotional of events, and screams...REVENGE...and we're supposed to extrapolate from that

2. the next article quotes an unemployed Iraqi Shiite living in poverty...and says, "many iraqis believe american blunders are more to blame." ...and i guess we're supposed to extrapolate from that too.

how many say, "yeah...this sucks...but it beats the hell out of living under saddam."????? i mean, if "many" say one thing...i'm sure "many" say the exact opposite.

 

i don't...and i don't mind you posting these stories...i just think it's funny...what do these stories tell us?? they're merely antecdotal.

 

The Gallup-baghdad bureau is not functioning yet, you can't do a phone poll with no phones......but I'm sure president Bush would enjoy as much success there as he does here.

 

now that's funny stuff!!

 

Well you got to figure their old polls were easy to do, Saddam ended up with a 134% approval rating.

 

my understanding was that 76% favored torture by electrocution to a day with their family at the park. weird, huh?

 

Same story, different reporters.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10999-2003Jun18.html?nav=hptop_ts

Frustration and Foreboding in Fallujah
For Men at Mosque, U.S. Occupation Is Focus of Anger and Reflection of Unmet Expectations


Before prayers at Shaker Thahi Mosque in Fallujah, Iraq, Shlash Ahmed, left, and Marwan Saleh listen to a heated discussion of the U.S. military presence. (Anthony Shadid -- The Washington Post)
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 19, 2003; Page A16


FALLUJAH, Iraq, June 18 -- A little before 1 p.m., in a city seething with discontent, the men emerged from the washroom, their wet faces glistening under a searing sun. A woman in a long black abaya sat expectantly at the steel gate of the Shaker Thahi Mosque, seeking alms from gathering worshipers. From a scratchy loudspeaker sounded the phrase "God is greatest," repeated four times.

The crowd of men paused at the call to prayer, a gesture of respect. But only for a moment.

"I'm angry! I'm angry at this filthy life!" shouted Adnan Mohammed, who was wearing a soiled blue tunic called a dishdasha.

"We're becoming like the Palestinians," added another worshiper, 27-year-old Khaled Abdullah.

"The Americans should get out of our city. It's a Muslim city. We're a Muslim country," cried out Shihab Mohammedi, as the muezzins' chants echoed among the market's minarets. "Who said they were liberators? Liberators from whom?"

So went another conversation in the Sunni Muslim city that has emerged as a center of resistance to the American occupation of Iraq. Since arriving in Fallujah on April 23, U.S. troops charged with securing the peace have fired on protesters, fallen victim to hit-and-run attacks, staged nighttime raids and carried out hundreds of arrests. They have also painted schools, put up blackboards, handed out food and distributed soccer balls in an effort to salve the anger in this city 35 miles west of Baghdad.

A day at the mosque, a run-of-the-mill place of worship located in a prosperous market, provides a sobering glimpse of how deep, perhaps irreconcilable, run the differences between the occupied and the occupiers. Inside the mosque's brick walls, across a courtyard paved with colored tiles, the men described a city agitated by unmet expectations and seized by grievances spanning not only nearly two months of U.S. occupation but also three decades of Saddam Hussein's rule. They grapple with a faith and nation they fear are under siege, giving rise to talk of conspiracies. And they warn that the months ahead will witness greater resistance, even as they dismiss the Baath Party's alleged role in plotting the campaign.

"The Americans are planning, organizing and working, but they don't realize that they're putting a noose around their necks," said Ahmed Mohammed, 36, the owner of the Islamic Bookstore across the street from the mosque.

Mohammed and his five brothers run the bookstore, which their father opened in 1950, the same year the Shaker Thahi Mosque began accepting worshipers. Mohammed is a soft-spoken man with a well-trimmed beard, whose politeness shrouds anger at a city grown unfamiliar, a country turned upside down and a future that remains ambiguous, at best.

For Mohammed, the anxiety stems from the presence of U.S. troops in the streets of Fallujah, a city of 500,000 that was treated relatively well by Hussein's government, like much of the Sunni Muslim region across Iraq's northwest.

"The area is Islamic, it's tribal and it's conservative," he said. "We have a proverb: A stranger should be well-mannered."

On April 28, just weeks after Hussein's government fell, protests erupted in Fallujah -- a city long known as a center of smuggling -- over the U.S. presence. Soldiers fired on a raucous crowd, killing as many as 15 in what they said was self-defense. Two days later, U.S. troops killed at least two people; the soldiers said they had come under fire. In a report this week, Human Rights Watch accused U.S. troops of using excessive force and challenged the contention that they were responding to Iraqi fire. "The Army's not here to provide security," Mohammed said. "The Army is here to fight.

"They're always trying to prove their power," he added, "with their armored vehicles, their guns in the street, their tanks. They're trying to use 'shock and awe.' " He paused and smiled at his use of an English phrase, then dismissed it. "It's terrorism."

Mohammed holds the key to the mosque, where he sat with relatives and friends in the spacious courtyard, shaded by a towering palm tree. Outside in the streets of Fallujah, traffic snarled along the main road, as cars barreled into intersections lacking traffic police. Horns blared, drivers shouted in the sweltering heat and no one gave an inch. At Shaker Thahi, a breeze blew over the men assembled before afternoon prayers, the sounds of water from the washroom serving as a backdrop.

"America is looking after its own interests. It doesn't care about Iraq or its people," Mohammed said.

His brother Abdullah, 37, interrupted.

"Iraq will give America a headache," he said. "Every Iraqi considers himself president. This is a fact about the Iraqi people. Every Iraqi is an extremist -- in his behavior, in his action, in his work, in his opinions. He's extreme in doing good and in doing bad."

"It will wear the Americans out," he said. "They are in a predicament."

Throughout the early afternoon, men trickled past stands laden with eggplant, watermelons, onions, cucumbers and tomatoes, and in through the mosque's dented blue doors. Some sat casually on concrete pillars next to faucets, their sleeves rolled up as they performed ritual washing before prayers. They soon gathered inside in rows six deep, their shoes left outside.

As in any gathering in Fallujah these days, complaints coursed through the conversations that followed.

"We've lived through a long period of oppression -- before and now," said Mahmoud Abdel-Razzaq, a heavy-set, 40-year-old barber in the nearby market. "When an Iraqi has an opportunity, he explodes."

Marwan Saleh, 39, sat next to him on a tattered orange carpet. "Before the war," he said, "the Americans promised the Iraqis a romantic picture after the fall of the regime."

In other conversations, many dismissed the outreach attempted, so far, by U.S. troops. They demanded that their lives become better, that they be rewarded for their suffering.

"When they distribute food rations, they should give every family $100 -- at least -- to allow them to support themselves," Saleh said. His list of requests went on: better salaries, refrigerators, fans, air conditioners, even homes.

Others shook their heads in disagreement, saying that they most wanted an Iraqi government. For many, the phrase itself has come to promise stability in the war's aftermath. After Hussein's relentless rule, the uncertainty of transition has proven vexing, and Iraqis are often heard to say that the United States is fomenting chaos either to justify its presence or to keep Iraq weak for the benefit of Israel.

"When there's a new government, everything will be stable. There will be no looting, there will be no stealing and there will be no killing," said Shlash Ahmed, 50, a custodian of the mosque for 30 years. "People will return to their normal lives."

For Ahmed, it would also the quickest way to get rid of the Americans.

"Everyone rejects the American presence. Why? It is a Muslim city -- not just Fallujah, but all of Iraq -- and they are heathens. They are non-believers and we are Muslims," he said. "We don't accept humiliation, and we don't accept colonialism."

In the streets of Fallujah, slogans scrawled in recent weeks have been covered with white paint. But some remain. "God bless the holy fighters of the city of mosque," reads one. "Fallujah will remain a symbol of jihad and resistance," proclaims another.

Worshipers at the mosque were dismissive of the U.S. contention that remnants of the Baath Party were organizing the attacks. "They're sleeping with their heads under the covers," said one. Many argued that the almost daily ambushes and shootings were still random, vendettas inspired by the dead over the past six weeks.

Mohammed, the bookstore owner, pointed out that under tribal custom, every death justifies four killings in retaliation. Others said mosque preachers are urging restraint and have yet to call for jihad against the Americans.

"Iraqis consider this period only a truce between their people and the Americans," said Saad Halbousi, a 51-year-old former teacher who runs a photo shop. "They will eventually explode like a volcano. We've exchanged a tyrant for an occupier."

Abdel-Hakim Sabti sat in the background. A diminutive man with a thick black beard, he preaches at the Suheib bin Sinan Mosque on the edge of Fallujah. He wants the Americans out, but he said he would give them six months to leave.

"If the situation stays as it is, we'll declare jihad," the 36-year-old preacher said. "This is what God commands of us."

 

However, from Washington, DC, Rumsfeld says he'd feel safer in Baghdad. Tell that to the dead soldiers' families...


Ananova:

Washington more dangerous than Baghdad claims Rumsfeld

An American army medic has been killed after Iraqis rebels fired a rocket propelled grenade at an ambulance which was on a mission near Baghdad.

But US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insists the Iraqi capital has less violent crime than Washington.

Two other medics were injured in the third attack on US personnel or their offices in 24 hours, a military spokesman said.

The ambulance was transporting a wounded US soldier to a medical facility when it was hit at about noon while on a road in al-Iskandariyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad.

Iraqi security officials working with the Americans say regional leaders are directing the attacks by people still loyal to Saddam, former soldiers, Sunni Muslim radicals and non-Iraqi "holy warriors."

However, Mr Rumsfeld claims the attacks are deliberate attempts to kill Americans, but they are not well co-ordinated by any central leader or group.

"You've got to remember that if Washington were the size of Baghdad, we would be having something like 215 murders a month," Mr Rumsfeld said. "There's going to be violence in a big city."

More than a dozen US servicemen have been killed by hostile fire in Iraq since President George Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

© Associated Press

 

Depends on the family and on the park. I can think of some outings I would trade in for electrocution.

 

Geez.... give a man a taste of sugar and he'll eat your whole arm trying to get to the candybar

 

Can't post an article but can probably guess it's hot and dusty

Seriously, I doubt anyone will write a positive article until great strides have been made. It makes for boring news.

 

There actually was an editorial in times from about a week ago claiming that things weren't that bad, I can't find it though.

 

Occupation is a b****. Just ask the Israelis.

Hey now that there don't appear to be any wmd or such minimal ones that they are not a threat to America , what's the excuse for just not leaving the Iraqis to themselves?

Oil? Israel? Bush's "legacy"? Halliburton? What?

 

Yep,

And all these article that are being written are completely unbiased, and beyond reproach.

Check back in 5 years to see how the Iraqis feel.

DD