Under Jaderiya Bridge in southern Baghdad, American soldiers are searching cars and frisking civilians. It is a dark riverside known for drunks and guns. Three Iraqis approach an American sergeant, one hobbling on crutches. The eldest tells him that an American tank shell killed his baby daughter four hours before the first Saddam Hussein statue fell in Baghdad. The second waves to a leg peppered with shrapnel, caused, he says, by American gunfire. The third just scowls. All demand restitution: the sergeant shuns responsibility. It is the usual, bitter dance of an unaccountable occupying force and an unrepresented people. "It sucks," says the sergeant. "You promise freedom. They get martial law."
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