Christmas in Baghdad

Thanks again to YankeeDoodle at DailyWarNews for this link from Asia Times, including the following quotes.

At night, most of downtown Baghdad is still in darkness, with only the blue and red police sirens lighting the streets and the only sound that of intermittent gunfire puncturing the silence

a double-columned queue of cars up to three kilometers in length snakes around street blocks and crosses a bridge over the Tigris, before finally terminating at a barbed wired gasoline station protected by a Humvee and an armored tank. Come closing time, so as not to abandon the queue and line up all over again the following day, most of the car owners decide to leave their vehicles parked overnight

During the day, some of Iraq's 12 million unemployed hang out in front of Checkpoint 3 of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The chances of an American accepting their resumes is next to nil, but they come every day anyway.

Iraqis are in broad agreement that life is deteriorating rather than improving. The prevailing sentiment is a complex mix of resentment and resignation, frustration and incredulity. On the one hand, Iraqis feel bitter about being occupied, and yet many are resigned to entrusting their day-to-day survival to the hands of the Americans

Considering that their option would be to try to take on the United States militarily. Can you say military-fucking-occupation? Do most citizens, at most times, rise up against their military occupiers? Well, only if they screw up like in the first three quotes above.