Some Iraqis Optimistic About Sovereignty

By JOHN F. BURNS and EDWARD WONG
Published: June 29, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 28 - When Shaker Assal was approached in his butcher's shop on Tuesday and asked what he thought about life in Iraq a year after it resumed formal sovereignty, he responded with a blast of invective as heated as the sunbaked sidewalks in his Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliya.

'What sovereignty are you talking about?' he asked. 'How can you even call it sovereignty? We have thousands of occupation troops in this country and you talk about sovereignty? Enough! Iraq is nothing but an American base.'

And what about the two Iraqi governments that have taken office since the head of the American occupation authority, L. Paul Bremer III, handed a leather-bound folio marking the formal transfer of power to Iraqi leaders on June 28 last year?"