Still, among the exiles there is deep distrust of America, a country that has rarely missed an opportunity to betray them. In the 1980s, when Iraq was fighting Iran, Zangana and other activists begged America not to sell Saddam weapons. In 1991, when Iraqis responded to the first President Bush's call to rise up against Saddam, the U.S. failed to back them, and the Revolutionary Guards that U.S. forces had left intact slaughtered the rebels. Since then, the U.S. has insisted upon keeping devastating sanctions in place even as it became clear they were depriving Iraq's people, not its tyrant.

"If the U.S. wants to intervene truly to support democracy and free expression, everyone will welcome it," says Sinan Antoon, a 35-year-old Harvard graduate student and war opponent. "But most of us know it's for oil and strategic interest. As much as I and millions of Iraqis would love to see Saddam leave now, we don't want to replace him with just another thug who has a different name but has the U.S. behind him."

Antoon lived in Baghdad during the Gulf War, and if the U.S. had marched on Baghdad then, he was prepared to support it. Speaking on the phone from Cairo, where he's doing research, he recalls, "I thought that the U.S. would at least, if not support the rebels, it would not allow Saddam to use his gunships against them. Some Iraqis already mistrusted the U.S. for obvious reasons, but they thought that maybe once the U.S. had no need for Saddam, maybe they'll take him out."

Which of course it didn't. On ABC News, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft told Peter Jennings, "I frankly wish [the Iraqi intifada] hadn't happened -- because the military were faced with the problem of maybe a revolution inside Iraq." And even Saddam, it seemed, was preferable to revolution.

Antoon recalls, "As the days of war went on, we realized the U.S. was destroying the whole country -- its infrastructure, its water treatment. What did that have to do with Kuwait? There was no support even symbolically for rebels, and Saddam is still there."

Baan Alsinawi, a 40-year-old Iraqi-American computer engineer living in Washington, D.C., also had her faith shattered in 1991. She was living in Baghdad then, and recalls that in February, the government lost its ability to block foreign radio transmissions. She would listen to the BBC, and says, "We had a really, really great hope that something would come. All the puzzle pieces were falling into place."

Then, in mid-March, the government regained control of the airwaves. "I will always remember this as a very sad day, when Saddam was able to restore electricity and he got on TV and spoke to the Iraqi people," says Alsinawi. "I thought, I cannot believe he's back." Today, when she hears the White House leaders talk about bringing democracy to Iraq, she says, "I don't believe a single word of it, and I don't think any Iraqis do either."

But many Iraqis want the U.S. to prove them wrong, because the status quo is intolerable. Antoon doesn't dispute reports that some in Iraq, fearful as they are, are eagerly waiting for the bombs to start falling. "People there are so desperate," he says. "They have no hopes for anything, so they say yes, bring it on. It doesn't mean they want a U.S. invasion. They want Saddam to be gone."

That's really the crux of the matter -- for Iraqis, the choice isn't simply between war and peace, but between different kinds of hell.

Yousif says he doesn't fear war, because "I am more afraid of the casualties with Saddam staying in power. Whether it's another war that he's going to start, or just the killing, the brutality that's used ... he kills his own people every day. He killed my brother."

Yousif's brother disappeared in 1980, a year after Saddam became president. Yousif was 13. His brother, who was in his last year of medical school, declined to join Saddam's Baath party. Agents came to their house and took him away, "right in front of my eyes," Yousif says. He's never been heard from again.

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