<<Under Saddam Hussein, they didn't have to deal with the possibility of being killed while shopping for dinner. On the other hand, now they don't worry about being turned in by their neighbors, which is what happened to one man after he brought home a banned DVD. Following a knock on his door, he was arrested and was 'disappeared'; his family was never told what happened to him.>>
It would probably help if we knew how many people are worried about getting killed while shopping for dinner and how many people used to be worried about being turned in by their neighbours.
I know quite a few Iraqis as it happens, and it's not uncommon to hear stories like the guy who disappeared because of a DVD. I know for example of a high school teacher who disappeared after one previous warning to show more enthusiasm for the regime when he didn't take a day off with the rest of the teaching staff to attend as a "volunteer" at some bullshit celebration that Saddam had organized. Some agents in plainclothes showed up at the school a few days later and asked him to come in with them for questioning. These are truly horrible stories and what happened to the guy was probably much more horrible than anyone can imagine. Another fellow I know had his back ripped open by dogs in his own front yard because he had pissed off Uday Hussein in a nightclub. I saw the scars.
The unfortunate fact of the matter, however, is that things aren't much different now. Iraq is full of torture chambers operated by various militias belonging to various political parties. The "President" of Iraq belongs to one party with its own party militia, which enjoys the dubious distinction of operating its own torture chambers as well as the "Iraqi government's." The Americans, I am sure, operate their torture chambers, only this time with no cameras allowed, Muqtada al Sadr has his, the "Anbar Awakening" or what's left of it operates theirs and the al Qaeda remnants operate theirs. I left out a few of the smaller groupings, but they too have their death squads, militias and torture chambers as well. So people still live in fear in Iraq, but the killing is down, mainly because the various communities and factions are now separated from each other, often by walls - - which somehow was never necessary in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Most of the Iraqis I know were not going to piss off the regime. They supported its "celebrations," and they praised its leader unreservedly. It was a small price to pay for not having their fingernails and toenails torn out one by one as a preliminary to more unpleasant tortures to follow. Even if they were falsely informed on out of malice, there were always people to contact who, for a fee, could "fix" the problem. The only problems that could not be "fixed" were if the guy had really done something that crossed the line, like not showing up with the rest of the staff at a public "celebration" or as in your example, bringing home a banned DVD.
The bottom line is that the situation for most Iraqis is much worse now than it ever was under Saddam. Very few people were stupid enough to provoke the regime and so its excesses were not all that disturbing to the average Iraqi. Materially they were much better off then than now. The current state of violent anarchy and repression is something that affects almost every Iraqi, as does the lack of employment and the cost of gasoline and necessities. Polls today - -
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/GoodMorningAmerica/Iraq_anniversary_poll_040314.html - - seem to indicate about 10% more Iraqis say they're better off now than they were before the invasion, but a closer examination of the figures shows that the results were heavily weighted by the Kurds in the representative sample polled. Kurds are about 20% of the Iraqi population and favour the American invasion by a ratio of about 85:15 over the Arab Iraqis. If Iraqi Kurds (who are largely in favour of seceding from Iraq anyway) were eliminated from the poll, the results would probably show that Iraqi Arabs are mostly worse off after the invasion than they were before.
