Some answers.

This post is a response to some questions by readers of this blog. I want to thank you for your comments and I hope I can provide you and future readers with answers that help you know more about, not just me but the situation in Iraq as a whole.Tony asked me to say more about myself and bookbug asked me to specify what I meant by "Liberal Iraqi".First, thank you both and thanks for your complement, bookbug about my English. I wouldn't say it's excellent, but I'm trying to improve my English everyday and I'm glad you found it easy to understand.As my profile says, I'm an Iraqi man born in Baghdad and have lived here since that time. I only traveled 3 times in my life; once to Italy and Yugoslavia back in the 80s and once recently to Jordan. Traveling was prohibited especially for government employees since the Iraq-Iran war, and now I can travel again to any country that accepts to give a VISA to Iraqis. Anyway, I lived in Baghdad until I graduated from "Baghdad college" high school for boys, which is considered to be the best in Iraq and that's part of why I have rather an acceptable command of English. I went to college in Basra and finished it in Baghdad, spent 2 years as a government employee, left my job because I didn't want to serve in the military and remained a fugitive for 4 years until I gave hope and joined the mandatory military service just to be able to finish my higher studies. I got married recently and I'm happy with my life.Now back to liberalism in Iraq, I want to say that it's a common knowledge that compared to the west, Iraq is a very conservative society, so being a liberal in Iraq caries a very different meaning than being a liberal anywhere in the west or more advanced countries. This does not mean that I'm against liberals anywhere, as on the contrary I find myself more close to them than conservatives, and I do have many friends on both sides as well as other centrists and independent people. I'm only against their view of OIF and the WoT in general. This is one of the few points where I do agree with the conservatives. I know that some conservatives have their own selfish motives behind their support for democracy in Iraq, but I believe that the majority of them just want Iraq to succeed and also want to have a friendly democratic government in the ME instead of a brutal mad dictatorship that has ties with terrorist organizations allover the world.Back to Iraq and the main topic of this post, I and many freedom-loving Iraqis see traditions whether Islamic or tribal in origin as the main obstacle towards our march for a free democratic Iraq. You can count Arab nationalism as another obstacle in this field. We, those who call ourselves liberal Iraqis, are totally against such traditions and rotten ideologies. We see ourselves as part of humanity and that's all. Some people in Iraq accuse us of being too liberal to the degree where we lack a real identity. This is not true, as we have one and it's called humanity.So there's no sophisticated ideology that I endorse, I just support freedom of press, freedom of expression, women's freedom, separation of "Church from the state", freedom of religion and limited control by the government over economy. I do, however support strongly international aggressive interference in countries' internal policies to save others from oppression and humiliation.In Iraq, we longed for a revolution to save us from what we suffered at Saddam's days. We made feeble attempts, but some Iraqis in the south and the north sacrificed and risked much more for the sake of our freedom, and the end was horrific. After that we almost went into total despair, and then the Americans came and our joy was beyond description. Still we do need a revolution, a revolution on the level of minds which without it, all the help we are getting from others and all the sacrifices that were given for Iraq to be free from tyranny, all these would be in vain. I still enjoy my freedom tremendously despite all the problems and dangers, and I have full trust in my people but I'm not ashamed of saying that we still need your help.