I met a Lebanese man today recently returned from Iraq who told me about a man he met there who had been imprisoned for years by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s regime. Relegated to a tiny cell too small for him to stand up in or stretch out in, the man didn’t see a ray of light for weeks at a time. Barely subsisting on one daily portion of gruel (if he was lucky), the man had to defecate in a corner of his cell and sleep on the concrete floor. This, he told me, is why he doesn’t care if President Bush’s assertion about weapons of mass destruction as his justification for war is true or not. The Iraqi people were in a horrible situation under Saddam and are infinitely better off now.

Such an opinion seems to fly in the face of the daily accounts from the “restive” town of Falluja or other Iraqi hot-spots where the so-called coalition forces come under nearly daily attacks from irate Iraqis, or the protests by 10,000 Shiite clerics demanding occupation forces leave.

Who is right?

As the last weeks of my internship fly by I am realizing how much I will miss having access to the wires, where I can see the news as it is happening and read the different interpretations of the same event from AP, AFP and Reuters. I’ve never felt so educated and on top of things as I have this summer as I devour the latest news like it was my last supper.