Too Late For Baghdad?

A Glimpse Of Life, Death, Hope And Despair In Iraq's Capital

(CBS)  My old Iraqi friend stopped me in a darkened corridor one afternoon. He is both Sunni and Shiite, like so many here — a product of an Iraq where those differences did not matter to many people. His face is pallid with months, years now, of anxiety and stress. The hours and hours of nights spent struggling for sleep that doesn't come, the constant struggle not to give in, always on your guard — stay aware to stay alive. The spies are everywhere now. Everywhere. It is like a time they knew before, under Saddam, only now, he says, the Shiite intelligence is even better than under Saddam because there are more of them.

"What will happen if the Americans pull out?" I ask, already knowing the answer.

He looks past me, out of the window, into the water of the Tigris River that flows through the city, and past that to a city and a country at war.

"That river will run with blood, Sunni blood. That’s it."

We don't finish the conversation. It can't go beyond that. You either believe or you don't.

I spent many hours talking to Shiites in Sadr city, the large Shiite slum in the northeast corner of Baghdad that was more like a prison than a neighborhood under Saddam Hussein's vicious rule. They don't believe.

"There won't be a civil war." they told me, over and over. Never. Not in Iraq. Not here. "Inshala" — God willing.

But you wonder anyway if they mean it, if they are telling the truth, if they really believe it. One old woman, her head and body covered in the traditional, black abaya that all women must wear in Shiite areas, can't hide her contempt.

"They won't come here," she spits, meaning no Sunnis will come to Sadr City, where we sit on a dirty pavement outside the social service offices of Moqtada al-Sadr. No wonder she's bitter. "Sunnis forced me from my home in abu Ghraib," she tells me, referring to the Sunni-dominated area west of Baghdad that still echoes in the minds of the world as the place of America's greatest shame in Iraq.

"The Sunnis were killing us, we had to leave our houses and run. We brought nothing, all that I have is these papers you see here, papers. Nothing else." While she is talking, a young soldier in Sadr's Mehdi Army militia interrupts her — "no mother, don't say Sunnis, just say 'those that killed our neighbors and the people." He's not aggressive — just chiding her. The Mehdi Army has a message, and it's this, for now: We are all Iraqis, we are not in a civil war, this is not our war. This is the work of Americans who want to use civil war as a reason to continue their occupation of our country; they are the ones arming the terrorists, they give the bombs to the foreigners of al Qaeda to place in our markets and kill our people. They are behind all the killing.

It doesn't matter if that is true or not. Here, on the streets of Sadr city where at least 3 million Shiites live, they believe it. And that's enough here to make it true.

What Americans believe doesn’t matter to these people. They are the group calling most loudly now for an American withdrawal. They don't represent all Shiites — there are factions and splits and rivalries. And still the streets run with blood, fresh blood, every day. American blood mixed with Iraqi blood. Sunni and Shiite still sometimes dying together.

[polypsprings]

Anyone with half a brain will immediately associate himself or herself with Edjohn's trenchant comments--both in regards to Lara Logan's journalistic brilliance and to Katie Couric's apparent intention to turn the "CBS Evening News" into "Access Hollywood" or "Access Anything But Iraq And Afghanistan."

There are scores of people being killed and maimed there every day because--and only because--America chose to invade these nations. It doesn't matter anymore whether one believes that Bush and Cheney were right or wrong on either front--or whether they botched them both. It still does matter whether we get the most important coverage of crucial events every evening, and as much of it as we can, from the networks' venerable and once virile flagship broadcasts.

Poor Ed Murrow. Albeit for very different reasons, every time Lara or Katie appears on screen these days, he must go on some serious subterranean maneuvers.

[siddin-2009]

My pacificism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of people is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Albert Einstein

[siddin-2009]

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Albert Einstein

[tulcak]

Edging toward civil war? Where have you been. There's been civil war in Iraq at least for the past 2 years! The US never should have invaded Iraq and we need to get out NOW.

[osidebear]

So the question remains, "What do we do?" President Bush has left us, and especially the Iraqis, in a situation that has no solution. What happens if we stay? The bloodbath continues, possibly for years, and American forces run the risk of becoming involved in a full-fledged civil war.

What happens if we leave? The bloodbath continues, possibly for years, and American forces may be required to return in order to oppose the rise of a Taliban-like regime.

President Bush speaks of victory, when there can be no victory for us. We are now just trying to figure out what the loss looks like.

[edjohn66]

So why isn't Lara Logan the anchor for CBS Evening News?

I'd rather real journalism -- like what Logan engages in -- was the norm instead of a rehashed Good Morning America.....

[alphaa10-2009]

Bush opened a Pandora's box when he unilaterally started a bogus war, a fraud on the American people and the world. Bush will carry this awful and shameful legacy to his grave, along with the accusing fingers of the hundreds of thousands killed, maimed and orphaned-- American and Iraqi.

Over the last six years, this Texas miscreant and GOP co-conspirators already have blackened the party's claims to any sense of integrity. Even Bush now is forced to admit he sees no connection between Iraq and 911-- and 911 is the only basis for the AUMF, the original basis Bush claimed to justify doing whatever he pleased.

While the original Pandora's box also contained hope, despite all the evils released, even that hope is denied by imbecilic US policies which have (1) no future except more chaos and a widening civil war and (2) further destablize Iraq, making partition of the country more likely than ever. Bush cannot even keep order in the streets, and never has, visiting a nightmare equal to Saddam on the Iraqi people

[gggranroth]

Pope Benedict was quoting a Christian Emperor of the 14th Century but, judging from the way that Sunnis and Shiites are treating each other in Baghdad, then everything that Emperor said is more than a propos today.
JeanKuu17

[clestes-2009]

May I remind you CbsCrash07 that the Iraqi people did NOT ask for Saddam to be removed, did NOT ask for US troop to be let lose in their country and certainly did not ask for the civil was that now rages.

Who are you to judge whether they are "worthy of freedom"? Are you God in disguse as some racist, uninformed, fool who thinks running off at the mouth to show how ignorant you are, is cool?

[patriotic9]

I am really sick and tired of hearing from the republicans that we are making great progress in Iraq like the kids going to schools and people got electricity.The people of Iraq don't pay tax to our government.We don't have money to run our city schools here in U.S.Why should our tax money be spent on Iraqis.It's none of our buisness.If Saddam Hussain has killed his own people because they wanted to establish a Radical Islamic State based on hatred against us,it was none of our buisness to remove Saddam and bring extremist Shias and Sunnis in power.Is it justified for any other country to invader or bomb USA for the liberation of those innocent American boys who've been molested and sodomized by American preist in the American churches.

[brianp55]

Nice going, George.

[Syndicate]

Perhaps we should let saddam out of jail so he can run his country. It would apear the Iraqi people are not worthy of freedom and had the government they deserved.