BAGHDAD — The streets of Bagh­dad are prickly with pointed ques­tions, as res­i­dents pick at my sleeve and beg me for answers I can­not give.
“Why is there no water?“
“The river is too high and will soon flood. When will the Amer­i­cans do some­thing?“
“We need elec­tric­ity and secu­rity, where is it?“
“Where are the pris­on­ers?” asked a man who gave his name as Muhammed. “It’s a sim­ple ques­tion. What is the answer?“
All of these are asked of me, as I pick my way through the crowd out­side the Hotel Pales­tine in down­town Bagh­dad. Each time I am forced to give the same answer: “I don’t know. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.“
Two pho­tog­ra­phers, Jason and Juan Car­los, and I have dri­ven down for the day. The drive in is pleas­ant, with the occa­sional T-72 Iraqi tank parked by the road, seem­ingly aban­doned by the crews. Once we get to the out­skirts of this sprawl­ing city, how­ever, the tanks and other mil­i­tary vehi­cles are bombed out and destroyed.
Bagh­dad itself, low-slung and dusty brown, is bustling with activ­ity. A haze of dust clings to the ground, and mixes with the auto exhaust from the thou­sands of vehi­cles on the street. Icons of Sad­dam are mostly lack­ing; I’ll bet they have been removed by U.S. troops and Bagh­dadis. The few posters and murals that remain are largely untouched, though. Dri­ving in, we can see the effects of the loot­ing and the bomb­ing dam­age. Build­ings marked with the Ba’ath Party eight-point star show scorch marks or are par­tially col­lapsed. Much of the city seems intact, how­ever. Even down­town, a target-rich envi­ron­ment, seems more or less intact. The “pre­ci­sion bomb­ing” seems to have been more or less aptly named.
The occu­pa­tion is not mak­ing many friends among the Iraqis, how­ever. In marked con­trast to the wel­come and friend­li­ness we always receive in the north and in Kirkuk, the looks here are guarded and even cold. We smile and wave at peo­ple in the cars next to us when the traf­fic grinds to a halt, but our fel­low dri­vers look at us and don’t smile back.
There seems to be a con­stant demon­stra­tion going on in front of the press bal­cony of the hotel and as I pass, one man holds up a sign that reads, “The Amer­i­cans are Lyers.” Another hands me a note in both Ara­bic and Eng­lish that reads:

Let­ter to Con­fer­ence, Bagh­dad.
Dear Lead­ers, USA and Iraq: We are Al Shaab Native Free Party. We wanted to [attend the] meet­ing in Iraq with the lead­ers USA and Iraq. Thanks, Best.
Saeed Ali­faashmi
Leader, Al Shaab Party
16÷4÷2003

It seems an oppo­si­tion move­ment to the yet-to-be-installed interim gov­ern­ment is already tak­ing root.
The Marines here have a tough job. The pop­u­lace is angry at the lack of ser­vices — no phone, water, elec­tric­ity or work — and the troops are get­ting increas­ingly aggres­sive in the face of mount­ing pub­lic anger. Every­one is on a hair-trigger. The Pales­tine is an armed fortress, ringed by con­certina wire, about 150 troops and a dozen LAVs or so. The Marines push the Iraqis back — not always gen­tly — as they press for­ward to tell their sto­ries to a trooper, the press … some­one who might lis­ten.
At one point, a group of Iraqis began shout­ing at the Amer­i­cans guard­ing the press entry point to the Pales­tine. The Marines began shov­ing the Iraqis back as they chanted louder and louder in Ara­bic. Then, the crowd sat down on the side­walk. “No Sad­dam! No Sad­dam!” they yelled out. They were protest­ing the use of Iraqi police offi­cers and demanded the Marines pro­vide secu­rity instead of the organs of the old regime.
“We want the Amer­i­cans to coop­er­ate with us,” said Muham­mad Abdul-Rasul, 46, an inter­preter. “We need work. Who is in charge?” He then demanded “Mr. Bush” to turn on the pub­lic ser­vices within 48 hours.
The city is awash with con­spir­acy the­o­ries, the pre­ferred method of analy­sis in the Mid­dle East.
Ehsan Abud denied that Iraqis were the ones respon­si­ble for the loot­ing and instead it’s the Kuwaitis com­ing up to take revenge for the 1990 inva­sion. And Arabs, not Iraqi Arabs, went into the Uni­ver­sity of Mustem­srya in Bagh­dad and burned all the books. And Amer­ica has trained 500 Iraqis and other Arabs in the United States, para­chuted them into Bagh­dad (nee Sad­dam) Inter­na­tional and turned them loose on the city to burn and pil­lage.
The Marines based around the hotel declined to com­ment on these accu­sa­tions.
The Amer­i­cans are “use­less” because they have been here for 10 days and they have done noth­ing for the city, said Abud. He said secu­rity in some neigh­bor­hoods is pro­vided by armed vol­un­teers guard­ing the streets.
There’s no doubt Bagh­dad is wooly at night. Marines told me they “took a guy down” last night when he was attempt­ing to break into a media truck. Iraqis tell of the pop-pop of auto­matic weapons fire from all direc­tions when the sun goes down.
The Inte­rior Min­istry is also a favorite source of rumor. This was the dreaded nexus of Sad­dam Hussein’s secu­rity state, and many peo­ple think there are under­ground pris­ons where loved ones who dis­ap­peared 20 years ago suf­fer still.
“Why don’t they dig under the Secu­rity build­ing?” asked Ali Abid Khafaji. “Amer­i­cans are guard­ing it and not let­ting the pris­on­ers out.“
Muham­mad, the man who asked about the vic­tims of Saddam’s regime, said thou­sands of peo­ple are wait­ing to hear about their rel­a­tives and friends. Where are they? They have dis­ap­peared. “We want to know where they are,” he said. “You are the media. You can tell the world. Please, help us.”