Worldview | A city gripped by daily fears

[Desperadoe]

BAGHDAD - "Don't go."

Never have so many people from so many nationalities said those words to me before a trip.

Americans, Russians, Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, even Iraqis kept telling me I was crazy to go to Iraq before the Jan. 30 elections. I take all this as testimony to how Baghdad has come to symbolize the awful fear of the unknown.

As one of the staff in my hotel here said upon my arrival, "No one knows where we are headed. Not even the Americans." I think he is right.

It is that sense - that no one is in control in Iraq - that makes the situation here so unnerving. My plane made a series of dizzying corkscrew turns before landing - the standard practice at Baghdad airport to avoid being hit by an insurgent's rocket.<snip>

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/10640440.htm

[NJCher]

1. very interesting story

I'm not sure I understand what she means in the last line, though. Is it sarcastic? Tongue-in-cheek? Or maybe she means it to be obscure because it's too dangerous for a journalist to say anything against bushco these days.


Cher

[Desperadoe]

2. Trudy Rubin

I am sure it is meant to be sarcastic. She is no friend of the Bush administration.

[Raster]

3. I read it she knows just how much a fuck-up Iraq truly is. There is no

grand, underlying sevengali-esqe game plan. The biggest cluster fuck of the century. Iraq was the wrong place at the wrong time and for the worst possible reasons.