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Thrown to the assassins

Another dimension to the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent war is revealed in this piece in Mother Jones. The Coalition of the Willing were obviously totally clueless when they entered into this fiasco - leaving aside the lie which precipitated it all - but their actions have done nothing for Iraq and its people. How this is all supposed to win the hearts and mind of the populace let alone get the country back on its feet is seemingly imponderable at the moment - "surge" notwithstanding!

"On the day the American tanks rolled into Baghdad, Abather Abdul Hussein and his wife, Balqes Abdel Mohammed, threw flowers. Literally. After a lifetime of turmoil and tyranny, the couple fervently believed the invasion would bring peace. Abather joined U.S. "democratization" efforts, such as a project to create a governing council for his neighborhood, and he occasionally ended up in the good-news Iraq stories that still seemed plausible in those days; one U.S. paper ran a five-column photo of him perched on a classroom chair surrounded by American soldiers, with a story about the "new Iraq."

These days, Abather and his young family are among the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have fled in fear for their lives. After months spent dodging insurgents who had targeted them for supporting the Americans, he and Balqes are relieved to have escaped—and bitter, like thousands of fellow refugees, that the superpower for which they risked their lives has abandoned them."

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