This is what we created in Iraq.......

[RedEarth]

Redirecting Bullets in Baghdad

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: March 26, 2006




Mass murder used to provoke some form of official reaction, however feeble. I remember seeing the Iraqi police seal off areas after big bomb attacks and poke around for evidence. Now, there are major crimes with no crime scenes. Very few of these mystery killings have been investigated, and it isn't for lack of witnesses. Many of these men were abducted in daylight, in public, in front of crowds.

Not enough can be said about the attack on a Shiite shrine in Samarra last month. That explosion opened a cycle of revenge that seems to have split modern Iraqi history. There is before Samarra and after. Before Samarra, many Iraqis tried to play down Sunni-Shiite tensions. Since Samarra, they live in mortal fear of them.


If this all sounds depressing, it is. That's how people here feel. I've been looking hard, but in two weeks I haven't found an Iraqi optimist. In the summer of 2004, I profiled a band of young artists who braved dangerous roads to get away from Baghdad and paint pretty pictures of the Tigris River. Now, they're homebound. There is a similar sense of newfound hopelessness in the faces of the Iraqis I work with.

........

It is difficult to communicate just how violent Baghdad has become. A DVD was recently circulated in markets showing an imam being dragged behind a pickup truck. There was also a home video of a family of four, including a 10-day-old girl, all of them wrapped in plastic in the morgue.

I recently met a Sunni man who used to be virulently anti-American. He showed me postmortem pictures of his younger brother, who had been kidnapped by death squads and had holes drilled in his face. "Even the Americans wouldn't do this," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/weekinreview/26gettleman.html

[Kerrytravelers]

1. Yep. Freedom's on the march. See, Democracy is spreading.

:eyes:

[LynnTheDem]

2. BUSH has created a living hell on earth; bush, WORSE than Saddam Hussein.

Iraq; WORSE NOW than under Hussein. Thanks to BUSH.

Iraqis; WORSE OFF NOW than under Saddam Hussein. Thanks to BUSH.

BUSH'S illegal "supreme crime" war of aggression; THANK BUSH.

[w13rd0]

3. The thing is...

...it didn't have to be this way. Even following the illegal and ill-advised invasion and occupation, it didn't have to be this way. Problem is Bush fucks up everything he touches. He can fuck up boiling water...

[Journeyman]

4. I'd like to read the full article. . .

do you have the link?

Wait. Googled it for myself.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/charlotte/news/14189909.htm?source=rss&channel=charlotte_news

[RedEarth]

5. I just updated it... thanks for reminding me.....

[Faygo Kid]

6. Why can't the media talk about the good things about drilling face holes?

Damn media. Here George W. Bush creates a paradise on earth, and all we get to hear about is the killing, mayhem and disintegration of society. So what if it happens to be true?

[Submariner]

7. You're NOT REPORTING the GOOD news though

The smoke in the background is not a greenhouse gas like CO2...just toxic ammonium nitrate fumes, and look at all the still alive people in the foreground. Try to be more positive. Why do you hate Murika? :sarcasm: