avi vets who filed for health compensation claims yeah you know saddam hussein seemed like a pretty bad guy but there are always ways to get around the confines of a dictatorship but there is no way to escape from radiation it is truly omnipresent so for the invasions of iraq and good for the iraqis well it doesn't seem to be doing too good for their physical health but that's just my opinion. choose your bank. account with. the consensus. choose the opinions that you think. choose the stories but if you. choose access to.

news. visiting the general hospital in fallujah is like living it was nightmare. children with two heads tumors love emotions missing limbs and macao brain on bearable little they say every family here is sheltering or hiding a deformed monstrous child. all of them. get away and the grandmother you know my daughter cries all day long it but she hopes to see her daughter get better. but. i deeply affected i leave the city with its newborn monsters.

we head for baghdad on the banks of the tigris. baghdad can be translated as the garden of peace. but it's a better fragile peace the patrols are iraqi wearing uniforms of blind by the u.s. the army is divided by political religious and tribal conflicts everyone fights for his own camp. the president is kurd the prime minister shia and the parliament is run by sunnis. in paradise square opposite the royal mosque stands a concrete pedestal. here once through the absolute symbol of power a statue of saddam hussein. on april ninth two thousand and

three two. into the ground of the united states believed to have won the will. nine years have passed the square is empty and the city appears to be in a state of siege. oh is that our passenger alley a theater director back from exile in paris waited for a long time to see his enemy for all and return to his native city. when i was thrown in prison and when i got out i was given five days to leave baghdad and iraq that gave me to. put folly the combat continues. i do through theater that he hopes to win it is methodist to reinvest the public with a sense of resistance and a taste for life. i know that out. there ability day i see

a country filled with wasn't the overriding color in the city is khaki the color of soldiers but i see young people with no future men and women deprived of any feeling of citizenship figure on people have forgotten their rights and their duties. as if they were lost but i completely lost. not. more fun to be doing your shoulder bit more than that. in baghdad no one knows who the enemy is anymore sunni's she is islamists christians each with their armies and militia each fighting the other. not of us i know some short guys who joined al qaeda just to get some money. so out of the hardened. of several al qaeda gives them money whereas the government abandons them farther from jail floors. would have paid to kill here on that floor so close.

the show well so they've ruined a few. edges that lives and their families find out. why for nothing goes. on october thirty first twenty ten a terrorist group claiming al qaeda affiliation occupied the catholic cathedral in baghdad. five suicide bombers activated their explosive belts fifty eight people were killed. in nine years of occupation of civil and religious wars and attacks of cause more than one hundred ten thousand victims the sensuous civilian.

in. syria khaldiyeh an orthodox and armenian churches have become choice targets. al qaeda assassins and sunni and shia fanatics agree on nothing except on a victim the christians they accuse of being western crusaders. baghdad is a raising its a lustrous christian past. checkpoints abound every hundred meters crossing baghdad is a permanent obstacle course. but i think iraq is a battlefield for a ray of foreign forces. iran supports the shia brothers while saudi arabia age there is the sunnis. and as for the month i live in alabama you asone district.

in two thousand and six i was all for. it was a. at least fifty rockets falling on us every day it never stopped. you know me the streets were filled with corpses and there was fighting everywhere to show out i'm out of you know that i deserve a new the battles raged for seventy two hours you know. the army the militia everyone was fighting. a band and bodies became prey fit to be devoured by stray dogs that my little girl saw dogs eating the dead which i had never seen before in my life packet which has left me just like the apathetic about. living in baghdad mean surviving attacks but it's also an everyday battle. in the capital of the world's third biggest oil producer the electricity system works for just a few hours a day. the best business in town is selling generators. for

khaled my driver a visit to the barber after ten days on the road should be a moment to relax a moment of peace but nothing is that simple. yes quite simply hell here sheer hell. it's not a normal life like other people have around the world. may god act to improve things what do you say to the good of will know for sure god is good that. i haven't. been. so hard she a school teacher she's invited us to dinner. yeah

twenty years of war how have you got through it as a woman. i grew up in ala on your head and how first the war with iran then the embargo and the two american intervention i see. a little but my first in one thousand nine hundred and the second in two thousand and three. for the iran war my brother was arrested and there was just my dad to take care of the family all those girls had no work my father ran a small business. we barely grown up when the embargo strangle the whole country can you imagine no fruit or vegetables meat we couldn't afford and fish even more so. it's only today that i can buy but we lived in safety the women could move about without any problem we had peace but in poverty i think that there's anything that that's really done i want. to. come up with

a sort of one of my wife is developed but as we have guests i can drink we may be poor but we still have a sense of hospitality. abdu and zara a sunni and a shia from a rough couple today war and religion have also imposed boundaries on love. as the lights go out once again the neighborhoods back up generators take over i have your message that you. none not one thing that we were hearing. from shia my husband a sunni muslim had now after the war the two religions can't intermarry anymore and that's and it wasn't the case before and what was important was that people loved each other and what's the distinction between shia and sunni thingy it's shameful

treating people this way in iraq where all muslims must. be so it's a muslim and asks for the hand of a muslim woman according to islamic tradition by far and that's all but i think how it was at the end of the war that this division appears shia sunni. but if yes now we've come to threats headed how does a sunni there an area shiite is that we're seeing as yet that what if the alternative is to get divorced or da you know if you don't agree to get divorced you risk death think you think you're going to janish if not in our neighborhood they shot a woman in front of her husband and children for the unique reason she was shia and he was sunni stepped up you know she. this morning i'm not just leaving baghdad i'm fleeing baghdad. the city gates the soldier who checks out passports tells us yet another attack

a scar to the capital. another checkpoint on the road to babylon we present our passports and passes. a country apprehensive. the sky is like twilight i feel like i'm wandering in the kingdom of the dead it's raining sand. prayers of punctuated each day on the road i sleep while he converses with his god . amidst the wind blown sand appears the mythical city of babylon. in his delusions of grandeur saddam hussein emerged himself to be its king the heir to the throne

there president of the iraqi republic saddam hussein in one nine hundred eighty eight inaugurated the restored city of babylon first built by nebuchadnezzar between six o four and five sixty two b.c. . at the height of his power like the ancient kings before him. built his palace in the heart of the legendary city. his tower of babel crashed down around him in the dust of pride and ambition. his memory has been left to the ravages of time and the insults of his survivors. ok going out. all.

right no way things are going to republican texas and be a whole lot better off when the state of texas texas has got its own larger cooper it has got all the oil and gas and everything it needs it's got all that and everything in me it can survive by itself without the rest of the united states which is to say the rest. cannot survive without a minder. striving for bread and an independent future. the republic of texas analyse.

the news about international airport in the very heart of moscow. at the end of the road lies come the mecca of vatican and medina of the shia world. but something of god and other al qaeda is the real enemy of iraq and even of all the arab regions i do believe several terrorist. ization have been exported by neighboring countries that over there are responsible for so many victims since baghdad fell. and i would stress that most of the attacks have targeted the shia community just one of the. pilgrims a well protected here all the offices and soldiers

a shia. several million faithful including many from iran come every year to visit the mosques in karbala a boon for the holy city. religion is a river of gold as the saying goes. we get more it's obvious that when a country's native sons defend it things go better and they're always better than an occupier. and invader always has trouble understanding the country they occupy and as the air proverb says no one knows the roads of mecca better than its own inhabitants that shout i have it if i have it. it's this is. the main prayer takes place in hussein most. the him i'm sermons a political resonance and a broadcast throughout iraq and the shia world and.

the shias today are imposing their numbers and their power. and. the prayers always end with cries to the glory of the prophet hussein the son of ali allegedly designated by mohammed to be his only successor you know that there. was. many on the underside a million shias were detained and many of them were assassinated then thrown into a mass graves and it's not much of a center i myself your servant you know. spent twelve years in iraqi jails my family only received news of me one or two years after i was released. i was even afraid of my own brother i thought he was an officer who come to interrogate me all of us we suffered and the prisons were filled with shias oh me.

leaving kabbalah is like crossing a graveyard. everywhere are portrayed shia month has fallen for the glory of the prophet hussain mohammed their. little bit of the. possible. on the baghdad bass run highway in the middle of the desert are faithful taxi finally gives up the ghost. i feel suddenly vulnerable alone in the wilderness.

as if by magic a man appears from the sands to help us out perhaps this is the renowned desert hospitality. we had for a camp for the men who maintained the highway once they were all soldiers and saddam's army. when the americans came many deserted. without knowing who we are to make room for us to share that. with out of the massive take iraqi army was hunger thirst and fatigue. remember your family was taken hostage and she deserves it. it is horrible in the days when they caught people who ran away they were simply hang out with the money

or one of you and i spent seven years in the army and it was very tough talk in sentiments days as a soldier was paid two thousand dinars less than the bank he was carrying was worth we can definitely say we were really miserable. the highway splits the desert and on each side of the road to bask in the vast oil fields of rumaylah and mushroom. more than half of the iraqi production is pumped from this burning desert a treasure chest within the sound. b.p. exxon mobil and the chinese cineplex of already got their hands on the bulk of it.

at last we reach bastrop where the euphrates and the tigris meet. travelers once called the city the venice of the south. who comes to kill us and destroy our country and good it before we said it the americans but the americans have gone and now my general so who else is continuing the job of a that nobody knows of there's no work and the situation is unlivable i say yes it was better before. conversely if we talk about security and civic respect we can say it was a hundred percent better under saddam. today there's no respect for the citizens and as if we were no longer men that's the truth that's honestly what i feel. we are less and less respected before an iraqi could walk by this head held high anywhere in the world and especially at home as long as the state was not affected or undermined things have changed

a lot i can tell you that the situation was much better before. the venice of the self was awash with detritus of all kinds half of the inhabitants are unemployed it's a humanitarian and social disaster area. here we have absolutely nothing. where we going but at that event in this oil rich country we can't find work. this is how we live the children of this country why is it fair does god accept this master is in the middle of all the country's oil wealth it's like the mother of oil but he doesn't seem to gain from it the inhabitants are poor and the streets are filled with the unemployed and it.

was once one of the richest cities in iraq today it seems to have been forgotten by both god and mankind the curse of oil is cruel indeed. and yet in the heart of the shantytowns is always given freely. and sweet offering . by our government isn't he in mind that if the government doesn't take care of the poor and is only there to save itself until it sound pockets i do expect things to change what. i have no minister has taken the trouble to come and see us to ask how we survived or ask us if we. need anything but we have nobody to talk to.

and so since the americans left the poor and the powerless join the militia and the terrorist groups who at least provide money and protection. everywhere in the city of portraits of the shia in my tired out saddam is radical troops feed on poverty. the road ends at our file on the banks of the persian gulf the end of our journey. from this is the outback hoyle terminal rising from the water far from terrorist attacks and on a constant military surveillance where iraq's fortune oil flows in and out. the country's fortune and perhaps misfortune two. wars here have always been closed in

the same color black. and foul was at the mouth of the shuttle our best during where the tigris joins the euphrates forming the border with iran. on the iranian bank a gigantic portrait of the m.m. how many is there to taunt us a reminder that americans have gone leaving pandora's box wide open. been especially on me personally i never thought i know collaborated with the americans. well john what chile i work i am and always have been a taxi driving us here. i still can't cross the country north to south from south dakota and follow all taxi i go wherever i can find work and i don't hesitate god be praised all i want to still live my.

twenty days on the road perhaps one hundred checkpoints. with my friend khaled we've crossed a country which is officially no longer at war but where peace is not being restored a country divided by sectarian shia sunni and kurd communities a country where tara is a daily issue. from the hoa they'll be ill so there manya kook muscle to create for. baghdad

bob alone kabbalah as far as i'll file we've traveled a road where danger is ever present. khaled was under the protection of his god and me maps of providence.

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watertown massachusetts off to please a shot to a day and a one suspects a. high speed race for rides out the government unleashes its forces on pro reform demonstrators than by frank just ahead of the monarchy is for me to one grand prix while activism trying to make their voices heard against all the organs plus. sleep well kids love my kids their friends live in those apartments. those houses we don't know about them as the search for survivors continues after the deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant in texas concerns good public safety violations and america's crumbling industrial infrastructure.