There's a story in today's Sydney Morning Herald written by Paul McGeough who has been a consistently good reporter, spending time in the streets among the Iraqis and getting the story out whenever he can.
McGeough was the guy who, late in 2003, interviewed the leaders of the resistance in Baghdad.
They were the ones that identified themselves as Iraqi army and talked about their resources, including, at that stage, 5,000 willing suicide bombers. His take back then has been pretty well played out in the real world.
Since then things have gone downhill for the occupiers but, apart from the enlightening Riverbend, we almost never see the reality from the Iraqi perspective.
One story was the father whose son had betrayed the resistance to the Americans and was given the option of having his son executed by the community or killing the boy himself. Which he did.
That should have told the invaders something about their chances. Now get this.
Bloody revenge at hands of grieving mother
This grandmother led a cold-blooded mission to avenge the death of her son. Nine men were executed. Wabila Felehi Hussein, 50, took justice into her own hands.
[...] THE lined face peers from shrouds of mourning black. Wabila Felehi Hussein is a 50-year-old grandmother, and her life is imploding.
Muthanna, her 30-year-old son, is dead; Adel, her eldest boy, has fled to Egypt; Hanoon, her husband, is in near-catatonic shock. After 35 years in the mixed community of Hoorijab, on Baghdad's southern rural fringe, they were driven out under gunfire. Now 16 of them camp in a single room in the Shiite slums of Sadr City.
Even a short time spent with this family reveals the grandmother's towering strength. Until now, all the blood-letting has been laid at the door of organised insurgency cells, religious militias, death squads that operate within the national security forces and tribal gangs. But this woman is being hailed by thousands as the Shiite mother who spectacularly - and brutally - avenged her son's death.
The son was betrayed to the militia and his body finally recovered by his mother and some other relatives from the river. But the real story is how she knew where the body was.
He said that after fleeing Hoorijab, the mother set her sons working their mobile phones, calling the few who they could still trust in Hoorijab to get the name of the alasa who might have given Muthanna's name to the insurgency. "They got the name of the son of a local tribal sheik who lived near their house," he says. "When she sent the boys, she insisted he must be brought back to Sadr City alive, because no one was to be killed unless they had proof of their involvement in Muthanna's death.
"He was interrogated and gave up nine more names. Eight of them were abducted and brought back for interrogation ... and then they killed them with guns, knives and by bashing some of them. Adel killed six; Saad killed three."
So then, if this is democratic Iraq, Wabila Felehi Hussein is unimpressed with the new Middle East. But as she slip-slapped her hands in disgust, she was contemptuous. "This is not democracy ... we have no stability, no future. It would be better if we all were dead ... get me out of Iraq."
Tears streaming down her face, she hit bottom. "We were happy when the Americans came. They lifted the Saddam darkness, but now they have led us into a new, blacker darkness."
We have meddled in something that is beyond our understanding, we don't get how things work in the ME, we have utterly no concept of the dynamics nor the hardness of the people who have survived at the crossroads of conflict for 3,000 years.
There's a reason that you don't get involved in a land war in Asia, its because the people don't need mechanised weapons and hi tech equipment; they don't just think they can headbutt a tank, they know how to do it.
When the occupiers finally leave Iraq, it will be the last chance that people like Wabila Felehi Hussein have to take their revenge for sending their nation into that darkness.
By her reckoning, her dead son is worth nine of those who were responsible for his death and she is fresh out of mercy. If the dead Iraqis total even half the 100,000 claimed by some, there is not one occupier who can be spared. The only question is whether the people think the invaders have been taught enough of a lesson, or whether they decide to finish them off.
The British in the South have been driven out of a base and scattered into the desert. It wont be long now.
Bush has led his nation into the fucking heart of darkness, and the only way out is madness and death.
HARD Rain gonna fall.