Opinion (Soumaya Ghannoushi): 2007 will bring no end to chaos

I have never been a pessimist. But despair is what I feel as I sit through the scenes of random killing, gratuitous bloodshed, piled-up bodies in street corners and comprehensive chaos through Iraq's towns and villages.

Three years ago, the Americans blasted their way through Baghdad, smeared the stars and stripes across Saddam's face in Firdus Square and announced the end of dictatorship and birth of the New Iraq. But what Iraq have they begotten?

Every day that goes past takes with it over 500 Iraqi lives. Last week, I met an Iraqi family friend who had returned from a visit to the homeland after years in exile. "How did you find Iraq?" I asked over coffee. "I did not find it," he smiled bitterly. "I found no trace of the Iraq I know ... What I saw over there made me regret the years I spent opposing Saddam, not for love of that dictator, but for grief over my country."

A symbol of death, fear and devastation, Iraq today stands as a living testimony to the untold misery occupation visits on its victims and its dangerous consequences for its perpetrators. Both are trapped in occupation's deadly grip. The United States after Iraq bears little resemblance to the one before. Iraq's tragedy will be remembered as a lesson about superpowers and how they can be blinded by their might, a lesson on the ill use of power.

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