Baghdad: The Descriptions of War and Violence There Are Not Overrated

From Jane Arraf, formerly one of CNN's best people on the ground in Bush's wars, comes this report, "Blogging Baghdad" that refutes Bush's happy horseshit today questioning the level of violence as well as civilian deaths in Iraq. It really is as bad as we hear, and then some.

I am very, very lucky. I am alive in a war zone. Most of the time I have running water and when I turn on the lights, a series of generators ensures that they come on. I don't have to worry about saying goodbye to my family here in the morning and not knowing whether I'll see them in the evening. I know I'm lucky because almost everyone I know in Baghdad has to worry constantly about those things.

Some readers and viewers think we journalists are exaggerating about the situation in Iraq. I can almost understand that because who would want to believe that things are this bad? Particularly when so many people here started out with such good intentions.

I'm more puzzled by comments that the violence isn't any worse than any American city.
Really? In which American city do 60 bullet-riddled bodies turn up on a given day? In which city do the headless bodies of ordinary citizens turn up every single day? In which city would it not be news if neighborhood school children were blown up? In which neighborhood would you look the other way if gunmen came into restaurants and shot dead the customers?

Almost unimaginable Day-to-day life here for Iraqis is so far removed from the comfortable existence we live in the United States that it is almost literally unimaginable.

It's almost impossible to describe what it feels like being stalled in traffic, your heart pounding, wondering if the vehicle in front of you is one of the three or four car bombs that will go off that day. Or seeing your husband show up at the door covered in blood after he was kidnapped and beaten.

I don't know a single family here that hasn't had a relative, neighbor or friend die violently. In places where there's been all-out fighting going on, I've interviewed parents who buried their dead child in the yard because it was too dangerous to go to the morgue.

Imagine the worst day you've ever had in your life, add a regular dose of terror and you'll begin to get an idea of what it's like every day for a lot of people here.

Emphasis mine. If only the president of the United States could read. And then, if he only have a decent atom in his body.

But, you know what? We ALL have a hand in this. That we allowed Bush to do this, not in one country but in two (and in parts of Latin America, too, and quite possibly by proxy with Israel in Lebanon), makes us all culpable.

I hate that this is the truth. Yet I know it is true.

Bush must go. Not in a coup, unless it's an actual coup of Joe and Jane America. Not in violence. We should have every senior Bushie in prison charged with crimes against humanity and decency.

But we won't. Will we?