Missing Saddam

Two years after the statue of Saddam came down in Baghdad, this is how the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people are being won.

"She coped with her terror of the bombs, drive-by shootings and kidnappings by deciding, at the start of this year, to venture no further than her garden gate.

But the final straw for the 42-year-old housewife from the middle-class New Baghdad district in the Iraqi capital came when a rebel attack on a water plant cut off supplies to two million people.

With the temperature above 50C, this brought Mrs Ali 'the true knowledge of despair'.

'I didn't think it could get worse - and then it did,' she said, her kitchen filled with dirty plates and the lavatories unflushed. 'The children are crying. All we want is to pour some water on our bodies.

'I now wish we could go back to Saddam's time. We suffered then, but not like the suffering nowadays. There is no water or electricity. I can't sleep because of the heat. How are we to live these lives of misery?'"