I was wrong, Iraqis want the war so they can be rid of Saddam

Having been born and raised in Japan, which in spite of 50 years of democracy still retains vestiges of the 400-year-old police state, I quickly began to catch the subtle nuances of a full-blown, modern police state.

The terrible price paid in down-to-earth ways: the family member with a son who screams all the time; the family member who's wife left, unable to cope anymore; the family member going to a daily job with nothing to do; the family member with a son lost to the war, a husband lost to alcoholism. The daily, hard-to-perceive slow death of people for whom all hope is lost.

The pictures of Saddam Hussein, whom people hailed in the beginning with great hope everywhere. Saddam Hussein with his hand outstretched. Saddam Hussein firing his rifle. Saddam Hussein in his Arab Headdress. Saddam Hussein in his classic 30-year-old picture. One or more of these four pictures seemed to be everywhere on walls, in the middle of the road, in homes, as statues. He was all-seeing, all-knowing, all-encompassing.

"Life is hell. We have no hope. But everything will be ok once the war is over."

"Look at it this way. No matter how bad it is, we will not all die. We have hoped for some other way but nothing has worked. Twelve years ago it went almost all the way but failed. We cannot wait anymore. We want the war and we want it now."

Coming back to family members and telling them of progress in the talks at the United Nations on working some sort of compromise with Iraq I was welcomed not with joy but anger. "No, there is no other way! We want the war! It is the only way he will get out of our lives."

I began to recall the stories I had heard from older Japanese of how in a strange way they had welcomed the sight of the bombers in the skies over Japan.

Of course, nobody wanted to be bombed but the first sight of the American B29 Bombers signalled that the war was coming to an end. There would be terrible destruction. They might very well die but in a tragic way there was finally hope.

Then I began to feel so terrible. I had been demonstrating against the war, thinking I had been doing it for the very people I was here now with and yet I had not ever bothered to ask them what they wanted. What they wanted me to do.

With tears streaming down my face in my bed in a tiny house in Baghdad crowded in with 10 other of my own flesh and blood, all exhausted after another day of not living but existing without hope, exhausted in daily struggle simply to not die I had to say to myself "I was wrong".

How dare I claim to speak for those for whom I had never asked what they wanted!

All I could do

Then I began, carefully and with great risk not just for me but most of all for those who told their story and opened up their homes for the camera, I did my best to videotape their plight as honestly and simply as I could.