Salam Pax - going down to Funky Town....again My comments : Somebody said on an earlier thread that they are disenfranchised. What the f... does that mean. They are unemployed. They have no jobs. They have no clean water or sewage systems and the rubbish is not collected. So, the people suffer from diseases like typhoid. As Rouala Khalaf, the FT's Middle East editor, reported (4 Sept 2004), after a visit to Sadr City, Saddam Hussein kept their education level low. The one thing they do have is 2 years of military service (and weapons). So, it seems we are still facing the same problem of an over-militarized society that Saddam Hussein faced after the Iran War (which he was himself largely responsible for and proceeded to solve in a disastrous way by invading Kuwait).