Two Nations in One

Friday, October 29th, 2004

Two Nations in One cites Annie Sweeney of the Chicago Sun-Times on the “second” Iraq, the one we don’t see on CNN:

On a Saturday afternoon in Iraq, between Baghdad and Camp Anaconda, the countryside looks a little like Wisconsin. There are farmers tilling fields and women walking on roads. Freight trains and major highways.

This wasn’t exactly what I expected when I left for the war-ravaged country the first week of September. And initially, it made me feel lousy.
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When I came back after three weeks, all everybody wanted to know was how scared I was.

Iraq was hot and smelly. It was dirty and dusty. Mortars sometimes boomed in the distance.

But I can’t describe it as scary. I didn’t see the hard-core stuff, and a lot of soldiers who live and work there don’t, either.

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