IS GOD ANSWERING PRAYER FOR IRAQ?

J. Grant Swank, Jr.


“’I am just optimistic, and I think we are on the right path,’ said Hiba Aal-Jassin, a dental student.


“There are dramatic numbers to backup this sentiment. A new ABC News poll finds 65 percent of Iraqis feel positive about their lives. So much so, that from the port city of Basra in the south, to Karbala in the heartland, there are signs of new life everywhere.


“The streets, the markets, the restaurants, they are all bustling with people. some Iraqis in Baghdad have even taken up new hobbies like car racing.


“’It is all new,’ said Luay al-Ameer. ‘It is nice.’”


Many Americans prayed earnestly for a democracy build in Iraq after the fiendish despot was dethroned. Is democracy now blossoming where Islamic demonism once pitted?


Per George Thomas,CBN News Senior Reporter, there is real hope. Six years have passed since the US moved into Iraq to rid the place of Saddam Hussein.


Six years. Can one imagine that the years have flown by so quickly? Yet they have and change has moved in for the better.


Where once soccer stadiums were used primarily for Muslim males to shoot bullets into women’s heads to decree “honor killing,” soccer stadiums are now used mainly for legitimate sport.


“Tens of thousands of fans feel safe to gather for soccer matches. Security is a big factor in all this. 84 percent of Iraqis say the security conditions are good. The number is double what it was in 2007.


“’We feel safe and it is much better than last year,’ said one Iraqi.”


Instead of the sharia Islamic maddening so-called rule of justice and legality, locals praise democracy.


People are talking about planting their flower and vegetable gardens. Children are tossing balls in the streets. Markets are selling their produce.


Instead of Hussein’s lusty sons picking up pretty women on the streets at night, taking them to rape rooms, then killing them before dawn, Iraqis try to forget the raunchy Hussein who played righteous while slaughtering his own.


Even Hussein’s relatives feared for their daughters. Hussein would have lavish parties in his palaces. Relatives were invited. However, before daylight a young girl or two or three could be missing forever. Hussein and sons thought nothing of taking his own clan females for sex and then murder.


No more Hussein cages where Iraqi men were stashed in the village square.


No more Hussein police stealing fathers from their houses, hauling them into the night and then stashing them into death holes.


No more Hussein interviews with Dan Rather, Hussein talking like Billy Graham when referring to his religious holiness, his spiritual teaching provided his sons and his allegiance to the holy writ.


No more Hussein pushing mortals into shredding machines.


No more Hussein lauding Islam’s Koran while seeing through its most bloody verses.


No more Hussein chopping off hands and feet.


Will the next generation in Iraq know true freedoms
so as to never know the horror their ancestors endured?


CWN states: “Violence has significantly dropped in the region, and for the first time, Iraqis are more concerned about the economy than security.


“It is an unfamiliar sight in Baghdad as race fans watch race cars zoom by on a track. Meanwhile, a local market is packed with shoppers looking for good deals.


“Six years after the U.S. invasion, Iraqis across the country are for the first time, in a long time, hopeful about their future.


“’Democracy is the only solution for Iraq,’ said one Iraqi.”


Read “Change Marks Iraq War's Sixth Anniversary” at http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/563483.aspx