By Cathy Breen
Amman, Jordan
March 18, 2005

Some six months into the U.S. occupation of Iraq, an Iraqi friend said to me in Baghdad as we were sitting at the kitchen table of the Voices apartment “The United States took the cotton out of our mouths that Saddam Hussein had put there. But they put it in their ears.” Now on the eve of the 2nd anniversary of “Shock and Awe,” I wonder if there is still hope that we might remove the cotton.

Two evenings ago, I found myself once again sitting at a table with 2 Iraqi friends and a woman from Lebanon-all working in human rights. Our conversation, which lasted for over 4 hours, would begin with accounts of current atrocities facing Iraqis, and later turn to stories of past horrors under Saddam’s regime. I returned home exhausted, acutely aware that I’ve never really grasped the extent of the suffering people endured under Saddam. Until that evening.

This article contains recent photos from inside Fallujah taken by CPT

With little option for a second sight, girls in Fallujah have to attend class in a building damaged in the U.S. lead raid on Fallujah. Fallujah, Iraq (photo: CPT)

By Sheila Provencher
Christian Peacemaker Teams
March 21, 2005

As we approached the cluster of tents in the Gebeil section of Fallujah on March 14, we didn’t know what to expect. We had been amazed that we even got inside the city through the tight security of three U.S. military checkpoints. We were also warned that if the word got around that there were Americans in the city, our lives could be in danger.

We had seen sections of Fallujah where the buildings were destroyed but still standing. But now our group of five CPTers and six Iraqis, several of them Shia, witnessed a vast area of the predominantly Sunni city where it looked like an earthquake had struck. There were piles of rubble where there had once been homes. Members of one of the displaced families greeted us warmly and invited us into their tent.