Gee, I’m so glad that we sacrificed 1,700-plus dead

Gee, I’m so glad that we sacrificed 1,700-plus dead, thousands more horribly wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars — for this:

“Physicians have been beaten for treating female patients. Liquor salesmen have been killed. Even barbers have faced threats for giving haircuts judged too short or too fashionable.

“Religion rules the streets of this once cosmopolitan city, where women no longer dare go out uncovered.

“‘We can’t sing in public anymore,’ said Hussin Nimma, a popular singer from the south. ‘It’s ironic. We thought that with the change of the regime, people would be more open to singing, art and poetry.’

“Unmarked cars cruise the streets, carrying armed, plain-clothed enforcers of Islamic law. . . . Shiite religious parties now control both the streets and the council chambers. And though Basra has not suffered the same level of bombings and assassinations as major cities to the north, the trade-off for law and order appears to be a crackdown on social practices and mores that were permissible under the secular, if repressive, regime of [Saddam] Hussein.