When Adnan Shalaal left his job at the Sheraton Hotel on Friday afternoon, he went from being a valued employee and father of three to a statistic on a police blotter -- one of dozens recorded daily in one of the world's most dangerous cities. Shalaal and his three young children inadvertently drove through a shootout between insurgents and police. The 30-year-old hotel administrator was shot in the head, his blood and brains splattering over the youngsters. His children were unharmed, but Shalaal was not expected to survive.
By day or night, Baghdad has become a cacophony of automatic weapons fire, explosions and sudden death, its citizens living in constant fear of being shot by insurgents or the security forces meant to protect them. Streets are crammed with passenger cars fighting for space with armored vehicles and pickups loaded with hooded and heavily armed Iraqi soldiers.
Hundreds of bombs in recent months have made mosques, public squares, sidewalks and even some central streets extremely dangerous places in Baghdad. On Haifa Street, rocket-propelled grenades sometimes fly through traffic. Rashid Street is a favorite for roadside bombers near the Tigris River.
And then there's Sadoun Street, once teeming with Western hotels and home to Firdous Square -- the landmark roundabout in central Baghdad where Iraqis toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein. In the two years since Hussein's ouster, Sadoun Street has become an avenue of blast walls -- thick concrete slabs 6 to 12 feet high -- that protect government buildings and hotels now home to the few Western contractors and journalists who remain.
Shalaal left the Sheraton with his two sons, aged 3 and 6, and his 12-year-old daughter. As he turned on Sadoun Street, gunmen in a white SUV passed between his car and the hotel regularly targeted by insurgents. Windows on the SUV rolled down and the firing began, with guards joining in almost reflexively.
Shalaal never made it down the tunnel of flying lead.
"He'll be forgotten in five minutes," one man murmured in Arabic after looking at Shalaal's bullet-riddled white compact car. "That's Iraq today."
I wonder how many American know how bad it is in Baghdad. The truth is newspaper editors are loath to offend their big money advertising clients. Bush has successfully rallied his "base" to pressure the press in America to tell only the Republican party line. The only truly free press in America is that which is not dependent on advertising. Juan Cole says:
When Farnaz Fassihi of the Wall Street Journal admitted as much in a private email last October, she was forbidden to report from Iraq for two weeks. I guess Paul Gigot [Editorial Editor of WSJ] can't dictate the news to the Associated Press. I'd wager most Americans have no idea how bad it is in Baghdad.
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