Defiance, Resilience, Suffering

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Even as the latest round in this fitful contest was being played, a few Iraqi citizens talked as defiantly as they had before the war. During a week's visit to Iraq, photographer Les Stone was told that Iraq would always need a strongman like Saddam, if only to keep foreigners off its soil. "I'd fight the Americans again if they came," said a hotel worker in Baghdad.

Government officials refused to allow Stone to photograph some of the war's wreckage, including Baath Party headquarters, which he describes as "just a shell of a building." Nor was he permitted to take pictures of police and army posts or even cemeteries. What Stone's lens did capture was human suffering, evident in scenes of malnourished children. But he also encountered remarkable resilience in the civilians he met. Many Iraqis have nothing but polluted water to drink, and while most foods and staples are plentiful, they * are being sold at exorbitant prices.

Stone, who has taken pictures in such war zones as Ethiopia and Panama, sensed that in some quarters, respect for Saddam may be wearing thin, not only because of losses in the gulf war but also because of the toll of the earlier eight-year conflict with Iran. A taxi driver whose two brothers died in that war told Stone that he hated Saddam, but quickly added, "This conversation did not take place."