Democracy's Price

By Kelly Hayes-Raitt

June 27, BAGHDAD -- The dinar's value is so volatile that moneychangers operate from curbside card tables bearing foot-and-a-half stacks of the Sadaam-monikered bills. People here shake their heads in disbelief when I tell them a single 250-dinar note sold for 20 US dollars over the Internet during the war.

While I negotiated exchange rates on my first day back in Baghdad, a car pulled along side and an irate Iraqi family screamed their frustration at me: "No water," the driver said, shaking an empty jug like a raised fist. "America bad. Sadaam good! (Thumbs up.) Bush bad. (Thumbs down.)," while his wife and daughter admonished in high-pitched Arabic. He sped off, punctuating his emotional outburst in a grimy cloud of exhaust.

Word on the street is that the American troops are deliberately cutting off electricity to certain parts of Baghdad to retaliate against people for not turning in their handguns. No power, no water. No power, no refrigeration, no A/C, no showers. Tempers rise with the temperature -- an exhausting 115 degrees well into the evening.

Mike, the dapper Kurdish Iraqi at my hotel's front desk, asks me if I've seen a book published recently in Jordan: "Terrorism Square: Security Agency in Iraq, 1968 - 2002" by Ahmar Mokhef Al-Omer.

Al-Omer was a general in Sadaam's army and escaped in 1991. His book details the missing dictator's atrocities. Mike shakes his head. "Thank you, America. We could not have stopped Sadaam Hussein ourselves. It's good he's gone." We agree on that point.

We also agree that Mike is in a privileged situation: He spends his days in an air-conditioned reception room, earning a good salary and accessing the hotel's running water and food.

We also agree that it's easier to discuss democracy and free speech when your children are fed and your diginity is intact. If America wants to win Iraqi hearts and souls, perhaps we should start with health and security.

Farhad, our 25-year-old Kurdish translator, is also glad Sadaam Hussein is gone, but for different reasons: He escaped from Sadaam's army in Tikrit just two weeks before the US invasion. "It's good that Sadaam is gone," he says quietly, "but we have no security now. What is our future?"

His girlfriend, Loosa, died during the war. "I lost my love," he explains, stoicly brushing away tears as he gazes off into the horizon. "What is our future?"