Baghdad diary: LIFE IN HELL - Special Report(Time.com)

[kpete]

Baghdad diary: life in hell
Sunday, August 6, 2006
• Special Report(Time.com) --

Time's Aparisim Ghosh has reported extensively from the boiling cauldron that is Baghdad. In an excerpt from this week's Time, he describes his most recent visit -- a rare look inside the most lethal place on Earth.



A knot begins to form in my stomach exactly at 8 a.m., when I step into the small Fokker F-28 jet that will take me and 50 other passengers from Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad.

I know what lies ahead: an hour's uneventful flying over unchanging desert, followed by the world's scariest landing -- a steep, corkscrewing plunge into what used to be Saddam Hussein International Airport.

To avoid being shot down by Iraqi insurgents, the pilot must stay at 30,000 feet until the plane is directly over the airport, then bank into the spiraling dive, straightening up just yards from the runway.

This is followed by an eight-mile drive into the city along what's known as the Highway of Death, where there have been hundreds of insurgent and terrorist attacks since the U.S. military established its largest Iraqi base, Camp Victory, next to the airport three years ago.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/06/time.coverstory.tm/index.html

[Fridays Child]

1. For what Bush has done to the people of Baghdad and Iraq, can anyone...

...honestly say that they were worse off under Saddam Hussein? That doesn't mean that Saddam was a great leader. It means that as bad as Saddam was, Bush is far, far worse. George Bush deserves life in prison, at the very least, for crimes against humanity in Iraq.