Iraqi Translators

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In a reportage entitled "Betrayed" George Packer portrays the Iraqis that the Americans trust the most: translators. "Millions of Iraqis, spanning the country's religious and ethnic spectrum, welcomed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But the mostly young men and women who embraced America's project so enthusiastically that they were prepared to risk their lives for it may constitute Iraq's smallest minority. I came across them in every city: the young man in Mosul who loved Metallica and signed up to be a translator at a U.S. Army base; the DVD salesman in Najaf whose plans to study medicine were crushed by Baath Party favoritism, and who offered his services to the first American Humvee that entered his city. They had learned English from American movies and music, and from listening secretly to the BBC. Before the war, their only chance at a normal life was to flee the country - a nearly impossible feat. Their future in Saddam's Iraq was, as the Metallica fan in Mosul put it, 'a one-way road leading to nothing.'