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It shouldn’t be a news flash that neither one of these Shiite forces is led by “good guys.” It’s a mafia-style war between two descendants of Iraq’s leading ayatollah-led families, the Sadrs and the Hakims, who don’t exactly express affection for each other. Beginning in the 1950s, with the overthrow of the king of Iraq in 1958, the Sadr and Hakim clans mobilized Iraq’s Shiites in a struggle against Iraqi nationalists, the Baath Party, and the communists. It was then that the Sadr-Hakim mafia founded Al Dawa, the militant, terrorist-included theocratic party which still exists, out of which Prime Minister Jaafari emerged. In more recent years, the Sadr faction and the Hakim faction became like Hatfields and McCoys, feuding—with guns.

and of course, a little metaphor, rhetoric and my usual melodramatic flair:

My sad vision of Iraq is akin to a rich, dying old woman, raped and battered by her “friends” and children, kept alive artificially by “well meaning” neighbors, who lies mute on a bed of pain as lawyers, priests and politicians rip her estate apart like jackals, each faction seeking ultimately only her money, and caring nothing for her dignity, comfort, or helpless young grandchildren who stand by her bedside weeping in rage and fear for their future.

You know, I like to write fiction, but in these times I just don't feel motivated- the daily truth of this world is more than enough.