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Edited on Fri Dec-01-06 09:13 PM by beachmom
The fact was a lot of Iraqis were truly happy that he was ousted. Life under 10 plus years of sanctions and over 20 years under a butcher president wasn't all that pleasant. And, they could absolutely NOT blog before that; the Mubharak (sp?) spied on the internet and monitored everything. Zeyad got around that because he was into video games and chatted with people all over the world on message boards about the games. Even then, it was risky, and sometimes he was scared he'd be caught. The NPR program Whometense linked to has an interview with one Iraqi woman who was clearly happy about having a democracy, and initially was VERY hopeful that a bright future awaited her and Iraq. The biggest problem (once we went in) was the lack of law and order the Americans provided. The looting was horrible. And then, by August 2003 the insurgency truly was born. But many bloggers have said that some positive things did happen. And even Captain Powers (who spoke before Kerry at the Dissent speech) spoke of going to the Iraqi people's homes and volunteering at an orphanage. Those were positive things.
I will admit that getting interested in the Iraqi blogs is risky emotionally. It represents a true dichotomy -- the invasion ALLOWED the blogs to be born so that they could . . . criticize the occupation. And Riverbend is a legitimate voice in that she represents the "losers" to the occupation. She is a Sunni coming from a family of high regard (her English is impeccable), and she lost just about everything. I do sometimes wonder if she or her family wasn't somehow connected with the Baathists to have lost things so quickly (perhaps a victim of Bremer's draconian de-Baathification), but that's just speculation on my part; and to be clear, I'm not talking about the bad Baathists, but people who were members just for better pay, etc. But . . . it was hard to know what was going on from her blog. I never knew how bad it was from her, because she said it was ALWAYS bad. It was the pro-American blogs that convinced me that after the Samarra shrine bombing, that things were REALLY bad, and that's why I ultimately decided that our troops needed to leave (before that, I really, really wanted us to make it right; after Feb. '06 I knew it was not possible). Still, Riverbend's info has been good -- her scoop on chemical weapons being used in Fallujah (the white phosphorous) ended up being true.
Hope that explains it a little better.
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