McClatchy Newspapers:
Layla Mohammed, a Sunni Muslim mother of three, remembered that heady day four years ago when a noose tightened around the neck of Saddam's statue.
"I felt that I was at the highest point of a roller coaster, just about to plunge into what I hoped would be an exhilarating experience," Mohammed said. "I thought, 'Oh, my God, it's happening. I live to see my sons set free.'"
She did everything she was expected to. She did the purple finger democracy thing. She thought that Iraq had finally been freed. And now, fours years later, she feels cheated.
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."
I keep saying that there are people living in Iraq. I keep saying it because there are far too many who seem to forget it. It's not just americans and insurgents, there are the people we were told we were going to liberate. They expected democracy and got a life of running in the streets and huddling in the basement and praying.
Another thing I keep saying is that we've taken a place run by a brutal dictator and made it worse. And I keep saying that takes real talent for screwing things up.
All we ever seem to hear from are people who don't actually live in Iraq. But, every once in a while, a voice like Layla Mohammed's is heard and we're reminded that we've made a nice little pocket of Hell for them to live in.
We need to be reminded more often.
Tags: news | politics | war | Iraq | disaster | Bush
