The Iraqi people spoke today.

Today’s demo. was organized by anti terrorism popular committee(an independent organization).

Here are some snap shots from today’s rallies:

:: This time we were(according to the most pessimistic al-Jazeera)more than ten thousands.

:: All Iraqi ethnic and religious groups were there, Arab, Kurd, Sunni, shia, Turkomen, Assyrians. The demo. was well protected by IP and US army helicopters.

::each party had its own slogans, but every one agreed on condemning Saddam, terrorists, Ba’athists, the Arab media and the interference of Iraq neighbors in Iraq.
. . .
I woke up early this morning, Zeyad came by, and the four of us( Ali, Mohammed, Zeyad and I) went to al-Tahrir sq., we found nothing there(the location from which the demo. was supposed to start was not announced)so we had to ask the police man in the street about it.

he told us to head towards al-Fatih sq.(infront of the Iraqi national theater), we went there, and we found a couple of hundreds there, all of them representing the Iraqi communist party, we were very disappointed in the beginning, but as time passed, the crowd grew bigger and other parties joined.

after 2 hours, the crowd was so big, I couldn’t guess the number, but it seemed like the whole Iraq was there, men, women, children, young and elderly of different socio-economic levels, cheering the same slogans in different languages(Arabic, Kurdish, Turkomen, Assyrian). They looked very happy and free, despite the risks of being targeted.

No body seemed to be afraid, in fact today I felt safer than ever.

I didn’t expect such a response from the Iraqi people after all the terror they have suffered-and still suffering- from. To me it was a total success. I hope more brave steps will follow.