Iraq's bloggers weigh in on Hussein death sentence
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1108/dailyUpdate.html?s=mesdu
Their personal views on verdict's meaning, impact, reflect a society torn apart by war.
By Arthur Bright | csmonitor.com
Despite the ongoing turmoil in Iraq, a community of bloggers has managed to grow there, offering first-hand accounts of violence and grassroots opinion of Iraqi and US politics. In their response to the death sentence for Saddam Hussein, Iraq's former dictator, they frame the verdict within an intense, personal, highly subjective view of their country.
While President Bush hailed the Hussein verdict as "a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law," many bloggers are not as enthusiastic. Zeyad, a Baghdad Sunni currently studying journalism in New York, asks in his blog Healing Iraq: "A milestone for whom?"
It is a major achievement for Iraq's young democracy and its constitutional government," [Bush] said.
I say it's sad that a majority of Americans are still unaware that Iraq's "constitutional government" is a joke, and there is nothing that resembles democracy in Iraq today.
Warring factions control different parts of the country while the government is imprisoned in the Green Zone. U.S. and Iraqi forces are confined to their bases. Militias, gangs and death squads prowl at day and night unchallenged, if not abetted by Iraqi security forces. The tortured corpses of dozens of unfortunate Iraqis turn up in mass graves every morning. Services are in shambles.
Reconstruction is nonexistent, not even in safe regions of Iraq, even though hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent. Administrative corruption, smuggling, nepotism and cronyism are rampant. Local councils and religious parties have become entrenched in their positions and elections in the governorates have been suspended. The government threatens the press with prosecution if they dare criticise officials.
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