Participating were Lawrence Di Rita, acting assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, and Emad Dhia, director, Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council.)
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I wanted to also offer the opportunity for you to speak to another gentleman today, a very special guest we have with us, Mr. Ahmad Dhia. He has recently returned from Baghdad. He spent the past several weeks there with the Coalition Provisional Authority. He is returning to Baghdad, was actually supposed to have departed Sunday. We prevailed upon him to remain for an extra day or two to brief some people here in the building, as well as to spend a little bit of time with you.
Mr. Dhia founded the Iraqi Forum for Democracy several years ago in -- here in the United States. He is a mechanical engineer and former project manager on a variety of engineering projects in Iraq. In 1982 he left Baghdad and has lived in the United States since then
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The people of Iraq, for the first time in 34 years, they feel free. There's no question about that. This is the truth. You can see it. You can feel it. And you can notice, when you talk to the Iraqis, they are speaking their minds. If they don't like something, they go in the street and demonstrate. That never happened under Saddam regime.
Also, in the street of Baghdad, you see over 50 newspapers, all these newspapers representing different parties and political (Inaudible.). They write with no fear of prosecution or imprisonment. And that's the first time happening in Iraq.
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On the services. The Iraqis now have better access to electric power with all the challenges we have on the distribution side.
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Q: And they blame Saddam, not the U.S.?
Dhia: They are blaming Saddam, of course.
Di Rita: Let me provide just a little context, and then we'll go to another question. But this soldier -- and again, we mourn his death today -- he was killed at a university. Baghdad University, I think, has something on the order of -- and I'll be off by a little bit -- but 50,000 students. They're preparing for exams. They have an entirely new leadership selected by the faculty. Most of the Ba'athies (sic) are gone. So while we have a obviously regrettable and unfortunate circumstance where a soldier has been killed on the campus of Baghdad University, the broader context is, Baghdad University's operating very much in a post-Saddam Hussein environment.
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