Letter From Iraq

Hi Momma,

I know I sounded discouraged, but it's easy to see the bad because there is a lot of it.  I try to remember that even with corruption and violence and ignorance, Iraqis walked miles to vote. Man, do they love to demonstrate, and even when they complain--I think it's with the knowledge that they are now allowed to complain.

The neighborhood we went into the other day was amazing. It was too good to be true. The shop owners gave us soda and cookies and we just stood there: dumbfounded. I think we were waiting for everyone to pull out AK's. They wanted to read our newspaper and watched al-hureeya (a news station that likes us.) Weird. It was a reminder to us, I guess, to not get discouraged. Of course, the slap in the face that is al-Furat and al-Jihad happened that same night and now we are in what I would call a pickle, but what you would probably call sheer terror.

That's what I did today, I went and saw what was left of a neighborhood once the militias were done with it. Blood on the streets and bodies and blown up vehicles and a shell of a mosque that people were cleaning up, even though it was dangerous to be out. With all of this, the only thing people had to say to us on the street was that they were glad that the Americans had come because they knew we could stop people from killing them and make sure the police acted fairly. It's not all bad. Sometimes it's horrible and that helps you see the good.  

Clearly, I'm going to be a little busy in the coming weeks due to the mini civil war that has sprung up in these neighborhoods, just wanted to tell you what was going on. If you want to know what's happening, watch the news, this situation is all over it. I saw al-Jihad on MSNBC and BBC last night.

LOVE YOU, (from her daughter serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq)

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