Open War Over, Iraqis Focus on Crime and a Hunt for Jobs

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 15 — The judge sits in his chambers, waiting.

He is waiting for the United States military to deliver the first batch of prisoners for trial in the newly refurbished criminal court in Kharkh District.

The judge, Nawar Mohammed Nasser, the court's chief justice, has grown accustomed to waiting. He was promised prisoners on Aug. 16. No one showed up. It happened again on Aug. 23, then on Sept. 6 and once more on Sept. 9.

"It's not a problem with the judicial system," said the 53-year-old judge, nattily dressed in a gray suit and a deep gray tie with white polka dots. "It's a problem with the coalition forces.

"If they cannot get prisoners to court at the right time, how can we expect them to run the entire administration, the entire state — to establish a new order in Iraq?"

The question of whether the Americans can transform Iraq is asked with increasing frequency.

Iraqis, in general thrilled to be freed from the long, sinister rule of Saddam Hussein, had high expectations that the arrival of the Americans would utterly transform their lives.

more…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/16/international/middleeast/16IRAQ.html?hp

if I were an Iraqi who knew about the three year old girl
shot (just like the IDF shoots 'em) dead I would be looking
for 1000 American lives - maybe more. This will never end.

when we should be seeing them as Johnny Depp.
The trouble has not even yet started. But it shall.

Kidnappers Prosper in Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Iraq--When the kidnappers told Dina Karim, 17, to come out of the dark room where they had kept her for five days, all she could think about was whether they would kill her with a gun or with a knife.

But they did not kill her. Instead, they took her blindfolded on a half-hour drive and dumped her in a Baghdad neighborhood, where she found a store owner and asked to call home so her mother could pick her up.

When her mother, Tissam Karim, a schoolteacher, arrived, Dina burst into tears. She wept partly from relief and partly from the memory of a 5-year-old boy she left behind, a child who was in the kidnappers' lair when she arrived and, for all she knows, is still there. ``He cried all the time. I still think of him. He was so scared,'' Dina said.

Kidnapping has become so common in Baghdad that it is hard to go to any neighborhood in the city without hearing about someone who knows someone who was a victim. In some places, residents know of multiple cases. When Tissam Karim was trying to figure out whether and how to pay a ransom for her daughter, she sought advice from a family in her neighborhood that had gone through a similar experience.

http://www.deepikaglobal.com/ENG4_sub.asp?ccode=ENG4&newscode=22833

Sounds like there's still a ways to go.