"This is my share of the democracy brought by the Americans"

[Rose Siding]

No one is safe. 162,000 registered refugees -32,000 in just the last 3 weeks. Many don't register and the number doesn't include those who escaped abroad. The sect doesn't matter. They can't go home.

Relative to the US population, it's as though over one and a half million Americans -professionals! teachers and lawyers- were suddenly living in tent cities. (Relative, that is, to those who see Iraqis as people just like us.) They aren't homeless, they're placeless.

From Reuters-

Those who stay face increasing pressure to leave their homes in a bloody campaign of killings and kidnappings carving up the country along sectarian lines and raising doubts that the U.S.- backed, Shi'ite-led government can hold the country together.

....When (Sunni Abdullah Fayadh) and his family tried to escape the house where they have lived for 30 years gunmen prevented them from taking any belongings.

"Now we have only blankets and pillows given to us by the Iraqi Red Crescent," said the 55-year-old teacher.

.....Sunni lawyer Sami Humadi realised he would have to leave Sadr City, an eastern Baghdad stronghold of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militiamen.

He lost his two sons and faced one death threat after another in the capital, which many speak openly of being divided soon into western Sunni and eastern Shi'ite halves.

He eventually fled to Falluja: "Now I'm here in this tent. It is my share of the democracy brought by the Americans."

Those are Sunnis, but the article also tells about a Shia who lost his legs, then his grandfather, then his home. 32,000 in three weeks.

"Good progress"? What have we done?