Their scars have accumulated like layers of sedimentary rock, each marking a different crisis — homelessness, occupation, war, dependency.
The contest bears down on one of the unanswered questions in Iraq's tortured narrative of invasion, occupation, war and recovery.
From his tale of occupation, war and anti-Semitism, many readers may conclude that his background shaped his leadership style and gave birth to his self-described paranoia.
On Tuesday, Qahtan Sweid greeted it with the cynicism that colors virtually any pronouncement the United States makes here, itself a somewhat intangible but pervasive legacy of seven years of invasion, occupation, war and, now, something harder to define.
Both words have been a part of the Korean lexicon for as long as anyone can remember, their roots in the country's history of occupation, war and poverty.
Tariq Ali Patrick Cockburn's The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (Verso) is an excellent account of a disastrous imperial war and should be required reading for the newly elected Democrats in the US Senate and House of Representatives.
They are uttered less now, especially after two days of some of the most vicious bloodletting since 2003 that killed at least 122 people, seven months of political dysfunction that at least hints at a failed state and seven years of occupation, war and misery that have turned disillusionment into disgust.
And in the theater corridors at the premiere for the film, "Son of Babylon," there was as much excitement as relief that culture — the high stuff of poets, musicians, sculptors and painters who long made Iraq so proud — could defy occupation, war, government neglect and occasional hostility to signal its survival.
Its recent history is troubled, including foreign occupation, war (both civil, and with neighbouring Eritrea), genocide and drought.
As we know from Iraq and Afghanistan, the alternative of western troops would lead to a full-scale anti-occupation war.
