George W. Bush has benn a *****-up since birth. After years of
admitted alcohol and cocaine abuse the football team cheerleader was
set up in business by his rich father -- and promptly proceeded to run
the company into the ground.

So it's not much of a surprise that he's been such a horrendous
failure in Iraq.

And to think that for decades I was a registered Republican voter!
Sadly, the GOP has been hijacked by lying, scheming traitors who have
adeptly pulled the strings of the nincompoop in the Oval Office for six
years now, forcing REAL Republicans such as myself, Paul Craig Roberts,
Pat Buchanan and so many others to flee its sordid grip ...
_______________________________________________________________
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-2470188,00.html

'In Saddam's time I never saw a friend killed in front of my eyes. I
never saw neighbours driven out of their homes just for their sect. And
I never saw entire families being slaughtered and killed'

by Martin Fletcher, Ali Hamdani, Ned Parker
November 25, 2006

Against a backdrop of spiralling violence in Baghdad, The Times
persuaded six ordinary Iraqis to visit its bureau to describe their
lives. Sunni or Shia, they all had a strikingly similar tale to tell

Inside Iraq: Read Ned Parker blogging live from Baghdad


Saad Hassam
Street cleaner
Shia
Single
Age 23

Saad was a conscript in Saddam's army when US tanks rolled into Baghdad
in April 2003. He deserted, went home and celebrated with his family.
"We were dancing. I felt like I was reborn," he said. He dreamt of
getting a job at the airport that might let him travel.
Today the eyes of this thin young man brim with tears as he recounts
what actually happened.

The Americans launched an effort to clear up the rubbish around the
capital. Saad risked the charge of collaboration by taking a job as a
street cleaner in the Rashid district of west Baghdad for a meagre $5 a
day.

That was dangerous enough, but the work became even more perilous when
insurgents began seeding roads with improvised explosive devices
disguised as rubbish. Street cleaners were blown up, or denounced as
informers when they betrayed the location of such devices. "You can't
just turn a blind eye. If you leave them there they might kill innocent
passers-by," Saad said through an interpreter.

One morning in 2005, two cars drew up beside Saad and his four fellow
sweepers and opened fire. Two of his colleagues were killed. Saad wept.
"It was a bitter feeling. It was such a minor and simple job, yet you
were not safe doing it," he said.

Saad quit. Four months later his older brother and a neighbour were
killed in a random attack by Sunni gunmen as they chatted with friends
outside the family home in the Hey Amal district of Baghdad. A few days
later gunmen opened fire on the funeral.

For a long time Saad did not go out, but eventually he and two younger
brothers had to return to work as street cleaners to support their
parents and three other siblings. "My friends told me I couldn't keep
going on like that and that I had to go out and start working again."
Saad has since found eight improvised bombs. He knows five street
cleaners who have been killed, and hears of many more.

Two months ago Saad was caught in a car bomb as he was buying cooking
gas at a petrol station near his home. He now has a festering wound on
his right hand, and although a neighbour drives him to hospital, it
lacks the right medicine. He cannot afford proper medical treatment and
cannot work.

He has told his younger brothers to go and work in a safer area of
Baghdad and, even though the pay is derisory, he will return to his old
job if his hand heals - because there is no other work and the family
has no other income. "Sometimes my brothers and I look at each other
when we get home and laugh at what we have earned," he said.

Saad's dreams were dashed a long time ago. "We always say, 'Inshallah,
there will be a solution', but realistically we can't see any hope."
Would he like Saddam back? "Yes," he says. "For many reasons. During
Saddam's time I never saw a friend killed in front of my eyes, I never
saw neighbours driven out of their homes just for their sect, and I
never saw entire families being slaughtered and killed."

Hamid Abed Muhammad
Baker
Shia
Married with three children
Age 38

At 8.30 one morning, gunmen burst into a baker's shop owned by a friend
of Hamid and opened fire, killing six customers and employees. They
also killed Hamid's friend and put his body in the oven.
Six weeks ago Hamid watched an Opel saloon pull up outside a bakery
opposite his own in the al-Bayia district of south central Baghdad.
Four gunmen opened fire, killing one employee and two customers.

Hamid knows of at least seven bakers from his area who have been killed
by Sunni "Mujahidin". The reason is simple: Iraq's bakers tend to be
Shia, and so are trusted to supply Iraq's predominantly Shia security
forces and government offices.

Hamid, a large, gentle man, has received oblique threats himself. He
has given up two contracts to provide bread to the National Guard, and
stopped baking at the Rashid Hotel inside the green zone.

It is business he can ill afford to lose. He reckons a quarter of his
neighbourhood has left the city. At least 12 regular customers have
been killed. The restaurants he used to supply have mostly closed. He
used to sell 10,000 breads a day, but now sells fewer than 1,000. He no
longer dares to open early or stay open late.

Three of Hamid's five employees have quit because of the danger. He
would like to pack up as well, but has to support his parents, his wife
and three young children. His brothers and sisters have fled to Syria,
but he cannot afford to join them.

Hamid will not let his oldest daughter, aged 5, attend kindergarten
after another child was kidnapped. He rejoiced at Saddam's fall, but
now yearns for the security of that pre-war era. Iraqi society is
wrecked, he says. "There is no solution. My children have no future.
How can you build a better future for them when you're struggling to
survive each day?"

Anas Dawood
Office administrator
Sunni
Married
Age 28

Anas has seen more of the world than most Iraqis. As a diplomat's
daughter with a degree in business administration, she has lived in
China and Morocco. She is bright and vivacious, and her face briefly
lights up as she remembers the pre-war days when she and her friends
took holidays, partied into the small hours and went to restaurants.
No longer. Over the past two years her life has contracted to the point
where she and her husband, Muhammad, are virtual prisoners in their
home in the hardline Sunni district of Amiriyah, west Baghdad.

First she had to quit her job at a trading company in central Baghdad
because the proliferation of roadblocks, bombs, robberies and
kidnappings made the journey to work too dangerous. Then religious
Mujahidin began imposing Taleban-like rule on Amiriyah itself.

Anas stopped wearing jeans after hearing of women being killed or
beaten for wearing Western clothes. Then she had to give up driving.
Soon she could no longer go shopping or to the hairdresser. She stopped
wearing make-up in public. She had to start wearing a veil and then an
abbayah when she went out. Eventually she felt unable to leave the
house at all.

Four months ago Muhammad quit his job as an engineer after the
Shia-dominated police raided his Sunni-owned company and abducted three
colleagues. Moreover he was risking his life just leaving Amariyah as
the last Shias, including close neighbours, had been driven out or
killed. That meant anyone entering or leaving the district had to be
Sunni and therefore a target for the police or militias.

Today the couple live off their savings. Muhammad goes out to buy food,
and they occasionally visit Anas's parents a few streets away, but
otherwise they hardly leave their house. They speak to friends only by
telephone. Their visit to The Times bureau - on their second wedding
anniversary - was the first time in a year they had risked staying out
after dark. The Dawoods do not know who is imposing this reign of
terror, but feel its malign presence all around. They hear constant
reports of reprisals against those who do not fall in line. "We feel
hopeless," said Anas. "We feel life will become more and more
suffocating. We don't know what to do. We feel desperate to leave this
country."

Would she bring a child into such a world? "Not if you were realistic
and reasonable," she replied. "But it's part of our nature to want to
have a baby."

Qahtan Aouda
Barber
Sunni
Single
Age 27

Only in Iraq could a barber lose his life for trimming a beard, and
Qahtan lives with that fear each day.
A year ago he was cutting hair at his open-fronted shop in the Hey Amal
district of west Baghdad when an SUV carrying four strangers drew up
outside. One got out, called for Qahtan and asked him to shave his
beard. Qahtan, who had heard of Baghdad barbers being killed by
al-Qaeda extremists for agreeing to such requests, sensed a trap. He
said he never cut beards. The man left, advising Qahtan to be careful.

Qahtan immediately closed up and moved to new premises a few streets
away. Within two months he had moved again, convinced he was being
watched. His present shop is in a side street, but that did not prevent
it being wrecked recently by a bomb.

He now keeps an AK47 to protect himself. He has put a sign in his
window saying he does not cut beards, though he still cuts those of
trusted customers. He refuses to discuss politics or the security
situation with any customer he does not know. Instead of staying open
long into the night he closes well before dark. He says at least seven
of his customers have been killed, two of them butchered by the Shia
Madhi militia last week.

Qahtan would like to leave Iraq but his family needs the $60 or $70 he
brings home each week. He would like to change jobs, and has a degree,
but cannot find a position without a political patron. "I feel
helpless. I can't make any long term plans," he says. "I just try to
survive each day, but staying at my shop will get me killed. I'm sure
of that."

Muhammad Shati
Telecoms engineer
Shia
Engaged to be married
Age 37

Muhammad Shati has waited four years to marry his fiancée, Lamyia, but
tragedies keep intervening.
They both work for the state telecommunications company, and he had
just persuaded her to marry him when the US invaded in March 2003.
Months later, when a semblance of calm had returned, they set another
date. Then Lamyia's brother was killed during an American assault near
the southern town of al-Nasariyah.

As Iraq descended into lawlessness two of Muhammad's cousins, both
farmers, were shot dead during a land dispute in the town of al-Kut,
but worse was to follow. On September 6 this year Muhammad's older
brother, Mahmoud, 50, disappeared in a Sunni district of Baghdad while
driving home from work. Two days later the family found his body at the
mortuary. He had been shot through the head and abdomen. His arms and
chest were burnt and bruised. His corpse had been fished from the
Tigris river.

Muhammad is now struggling to support his brother's wife and five
children, aged between 5 and 20. Some time ago he switched to an
administrative job because going out on repair jobs was too dangerous.
But that pays only $180 a month, so he is desperately searching for
something more lucrative. There is no way he can afford to marry.

Saddam at least offered security, he says. "If you kept away from his
regime you felt safe." Today he is close to despair. "It's grim, it's
bleak, but we have to survive this. We have learnt in Iraq to deal with
reality and forget about hopes and imagination."

Will he ever get married? "Inshallah," he replies. "Love keeps Lamyia
patient. But with the way things are going now, marriage is becoming
ever harder to envisage. When I see a wedding car in Baghdad I gaze at
them and wonder can it be true that someone is still getting married in
the middle of all this?"

Omar al-Azani
IT manager
Sunni
Single
Age 33

Omar, who once played basketball for Iraq, comes from Gazaliyah, a
mixed area of west Baghdad racked by bombings, shootings and
kidnappings. His brother fled to the Gulf in March. In July Mahdi
militiamen seized his two aunts and a 28-year-old nephew. Omar later
found their bodies in a grave in Karbala; his nephew's mouth had been
slit right up to his ears. A month after that his parents fled to Syria.
For the past few months Omar was living in a hotel in the relatively
safe Karradah district where he was installing an internet system. He
did not dare go out. He sold his car. For $35 he had acquired a fake
identity card because Omar was a Sunni name.

He is now in Sulaimaniyah, in the safer Kurdish north, waiting for his
brother to secure him a visa for the Gulf. "It's very difficult. I will
leave my friends, my family, my memories. I don't know if I'll ever
come back," he said. "Maybe I'll find a new life somewhere else in a
country where I can walk down the street and eat in restaurants like a
normal human being."
--
PLEASE EMAIL THESE LINKS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW:
www.predatoryaliens.com
www.immigrationshumancost.org
www.daylaborers.org
www.alipac.us

"The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave" by Heather MacDonald
www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_illegal_alien.html

See the COLOSSAL costs of illegal aliens to the American taxpayer:
www.immigrationcounters.com

www.AmericanPatrol.com
www.SaveOurState.org
www.escapingjustice.com

Just two of MANY American cops murdered by illegals:
www.deputydavidmarch.com
www.kriseggle.org

"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an
irate, tireless minority keen on setting brushfires of
freedom in the minds of men."
-- Samuel Adams
.
"Unfortunately, the majority of illegal aliens who are here are engaged
in criminal activity. Identity theft, use of fraudulent social security
numbers and green cards, tax evasion, driving without licenses
represent some of the crimes that are engaged in by the majority of
illegal aliens on a daily basis merely to maintain and hide their
illegal status. In addition, violent crime and drug distribution and
possession is also prevalent among illegal aliens. Over 25% of today's
federal prison population are illegal aliens. In some areas of the
country, 12% of felonies, 25% of burglaries and 34% of thefts are
committed by illegal aliens."
-- Testimony of District Attorney John M. Morganelli before the House
Subcommittee on immigration, Border, Security and Claims [Note: 99% of
warrants for murder in Los Angeles, California -- the USA's 2nd
most-populous city -- are for illegal aliens]