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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NickSE who wrote (101425)	6/13/2003 5:56:55 PM
From: NickSE	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Keep reading G's blog from Baghdad..... Wednesday, June 11, 2003 geeinbaghdad.blogspot.com Baghdad now is the most boring place u to be in ”the rhythm of life is returning slowly to normal but the landscape of destruction still is vast. The mornings belong to the commerce that is much more in evidence than just two weeks ago as consumer goods flood a market where the lack of tariffs or customs duties have led to an explosion of imports. The streets are filled with schoolchildren, and the universities are in session though many buildings remain stripped of equipment and windows. Politics and religion, too, are day occupations, for when the sun begins to set, Baghdad reverts to a war zone, where looters, bandits and hundreds of army patrols own the streets. Gunfire still punctuates the night and few Baghdadis venture out to the fish restaurants that are opening to empty tables in a town where a dinner of river carp called masgouf is a staple of life” If we were in Beirut, grozny or Tehran with the same set of events we just had in Baghdad, We would have half of the politicians around us assassinated by rival factions, at least 10 suicide bombers, half of the American journalists here taken as hostages and sectarian / ethnic fighting’s in the streets. Instead of that what we see around us, is a city going back to life some times grudgingly but other times with fast speed. Electricity is almost as normal as in the days of Saddam, the markets are just beautiful, people are going out shopping for clothes, satellite dishes, or just buying cokes, you have families in the streets, Americans in humviees surrounded by kids, security is much better and people are still selling beer on the side walks in some districts of Baghdad in spite of all the fiery sermons by Shi’a / Sunni clerics calling for a virtuous – read alcohol free - society). I don’t want to give the impression here that every thing is all right and there is no crisis in Iraq, I just want to say that the Americans had - and still have - a perfect opportunity in Iraq, an opportunity they won’t have anywhere else, they could have won the hearts and minds of the Iraqis from the first week after the toppling of the regime, but instead they just provided the extremists with all the pretexts they need - as if they needed any- to attack the Americans they have wasted a good deal of good intensions and hope. please stop and start doing your homework properly, I don’t want my country to be another breeding place for Osamas and lunatic terrorists. // posted by G @ 10:38 PM