Jon Lee Anderson’s segment in the New Yorker this week weave an amazing tapestry of Iraqi life. I really love stories like these — raw experience put elegantly in words, not to shove a political ideology down our throats, but just to tell what someone is seeing. Very poignant, and very important.

Dr. Saleh said that the hospital had taken in about three hundred people who had been injured by the bombing. The doctors had managed to save everyone so far, although twenty people were already dead when they arrived. “War always brings tragedy, fear, pain, and psychological trauma,” he said. “Personally, I feel that problems can be solved by discussion and negotiation and collaboration. When you use military power, it means your brain has stopped. As an Iraqi, I feel that this is my country, and that I should work to maintain it and protect it from invasion, whatever invasion it is. I think any person would take this position when his country is attacked.”

Probably true.