Iraqis nostalgic for Saddam era

[blitzen]

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/world/16852903.htm

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Four years ago, Iraqi poet Abbas Chaychan, a Shiite Muslim who'd been forced into exile during the predominantly Sunni Muslim regime of Saddam Hussein, hailed the American presence here in a poem that praised the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer.


"We have breakfasts of kabab and qaymar," he wrote, describing the new Iraq with a reference to a rich cream that's considered a sign of wealth. "We put, in your stead, Mr. Bremer / Better than a tyrant of our own flesh and blood, and his torture."


Last January, shortly after Saddam was hanged, Chaychan again put words to paper. But his outlook had changed.


"History is proud to write about him," he said of Saddam. "It wasn't a rope that wrapped around the neck / It was the neck that wrapped around the rope. ...


"From his childhood he was a leader, stubborn and against the occupation."


As the anniversary of the March 20, 2003, U.S.-led invasion of Iraq nears, many Iraqis, like Chaychan, are expressing nostalgia for the time more than 1,000 days ago when Saddam's statue stood proudly in Baghdad's Fardos Square.


Chaychan's reading of his most recent work, in which he calls Saddam the Arab world's "knight" and compares his death to the eclipsing of the sun, has become a popular Iraqi destination on video-sharing services such as YouTube, where his pained voice rings out over a montage of shots of the Iraqi dictator: clenching his fist in the air, sporting his signature beret, at trial holding a Quran, with a noose around his neck.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

1. You know things are pretty fucked up...

when an exiled Shiite is mourning the passing of the days of Hussein.

What have we done to those poor people.... :cry:

[scarletwoman]

2. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss..." (nt)

[leftchick]

3. "I have been conned"

ain't that the truth! They wanted your oil honey, sorry but it is the truth. :(

<snip>

"At that moment I felt that I was, at last, a sated human being. I had an opinion and it carried weight! I shall treasure that moment all my life," she said. "If only I could have that moment back; its joy was untainted. Now I know better."


The life of freedom and liberty she was promised never came. Her sons are trying to flee the country. She can't afford to keep her house warm, and no longer goes to her pharmacy in the neighborhood of Hurriyah, a once mixed-sect neighborhood that was emptied of most Sunnis in December.


"I have been conned," Mohammed said.


When Saddam was executed she told herself, "There goes the one man who could stop this bloodbath. I thought we would have to pay oil for freedom and democracy, but not our life's blood. It's too much."


She put her hand to her head. "It's too much."