Thursday, March 20 - Jerusalem

I'm out of Iraq now. I caught a plane yesterday morning from Irbil to Amman, then drove overland back to the bureau in Jerusalem. I can't say I'm sad to have left.

I woke up from a long sleep to read a long list of headlines highlighting George W. Bush's hailing America's "strategic victory" in Iraq. As you might be able to tell from what I've been writing here and in the newspaper, his triumphant assessment was wildly at odds with the sense I got on the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere.

For the record, I'm not the only one who has a different take than Mr. Bush. Here's how some of the Arab media reported on the fifth anniversary of the 2003 invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein:

Al-Ahram (Egypt): "(Thursday), it will be five years since the U.S. war on Iraq began. The war was waged on the pretext of disarming Iraq and bringing freedom and democracy to its people. Today, we ask: Were these aims really achieved on the ground? The answer is this: Iraq today is passing through the worst phase ever in its modern history. It is living under the most terrible and savage military occupation that is engaging in the ugliest forms of repression in history. Hundreds of people are killed each month. The lives of many more are threatened each day by poverty, power cuts, and water, food, and medicine shortages."

Dar al-Hayat (Saudi-owned, pan-Arab daily): "Five years after the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, the outcome boils down to nothing more than multidimensional catastrophes. The scary figures so far recorded reveal the impossibility of comparing the declared objectives of the invasion and the status quo: Tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands injured, millions displaced, and billions of dollars wasted on the country's infrastructure. This is not to mention the sectarian, ethnic, and tribal divisions unprecedented in the modern history of Mesopotamia. On top of this, the structure of the Iraqi state is in complete collapse; its former institutions have been transformed into partisan and confessional sectors that consume massive budgets and invest them in domestic conflicts and war over influence. The oil wealth, meanwhile, has been plundered and squandered through smuggling, whereas the agricultural and industrial sectors have melted down, leaving billions of dollars in losses..."

Blogger "Last of Iraqis" : "During these 5 years I have experienced everything, two of my relatives kidnapped, 6 of the people I know closely including relatives and close friends have been killed, I can't count the number of people that I know who were murdered, my niece who is 7 years old girl died in an explosion, most of my friends and relatives have left the country, I watched my teachers and college professors being killed or kidnapped one after the other, I have been near an explosion countless times, I have witnessed uncountable number of dead bodies and crying families taking their dead beloved from the forensic medicine building, I have seen 3 men at different times being shot to death in front of me, I have been through militias checkpoints several times, Me and my wife have been targeted by a national guard sniper for a reason I didn't know till this moment, I have seen dead bodies left on the side walk and no dares to bury them, my family have been threatened and forced to leave the country and I joined them and stayed in Jordan/Amman for about a year and then had to return back despite the horrible situation and the extra danger on me being threatened, but what can I do, I tried desperately to find a job there but like most of Iraqis, I couldn't. I'm just one Iraqi and I have such loses, imagine 28 million one like me, how much looses does the Iraqis have?"