Grassroots testimony

The Guardian’s Rory McCarthy in Baghdad gives a fascinating insight into real-life debates about the occupation and resistance in Iraq.

In his report on December 10, 2004, he quotes from a discussion between Najwa al-Bayati and her uncle.

"We want America to be a powerful friend that can defend us, but we don't want him to rule us," he said. "Getting rid of Saddam was good, but they didn't keep their promises. They broke their word. They only came for the oil."

Mrs Bayati, 50, shouted back: "But they took away Saddam. Without them Saddam would never have left Iraq in 200 years. We would have been ruled by his children and his children's children."

It continues: “Over the course of several conversations in spring this year Mrs Bayati, a strong-minded, middle-class woman and moderate Shia, had described her life. She spoke of her heartbreak at the death of her daughter Samar in an accident five years ago, the death of her husband a few months later, not long after he was released from four years in Saddam's jails, her joy at watching the fall of Saddam, her frustration at the failures of the US occupation and her struggle to get back her job as a vet at the agriculture ministry.”

She had joined as a young veterinary student in Baghdad in 1971 and is a Communist party candidate in the January elections.

Several friends have been murdered by the so-called resistance, including Waddah Hassan Abdel-Amir, a senior official at the Communist party.