Ten years on, the war has left more than 134,000 Iraqis and 4,800 Americans dead and cost hundreds

Ten years on, the war has left more than 134,000 Iraqis and 4,800 Americans cool cookie jars dead. It has left a heavy toll on Iraqis in a war in which they had no say, CNN's Arwa Damon reports. cool cookie jars
There were other clues about the life of the family cool cookie jars that once lived here. Pictures torn on the ground, a teddy bear in a drawer, clothes turned into clumps of matted shreds. A lone, delicate, cool cookie jars hour-glass-shaped tea cup that somehow survived the American bombardment, peeking out from a heap of rubble.
Who was this little girl? He spent nights curled up in bed his parents feared ghosts of al Qaeda operatives in the street? He burst into uncontrollable tears as military pounded her city? Or did the family run well before this all have happened?
I decided to knock on the door and ask about the little girl. I had a brief conversation with one of the guys who responded. cool cookie jars Like just about any Iraqi at the time, he was clearly uncomfortable with a Western TV crew and an entire platoon of American soldiers at his front door.
The man told me before the residents were distant relatives and had gone elsewhere. Realizing how distressed he and the other adults were, I thanked them and left. My desperate curiosity was trumped by the knowledge cool cookie jars that our lingering presence could put them in danger if they were spotted talking to Americans.
There were plenty of hair-raising moments in Falluja. We saw soldiers killed; festering corpses of insurgents rotting in the sun; few remaining residents flocking to a mosque for food; brave little boy, a bone protruding from his arm, who barely cried loudly as medics Americans had tended to him.
A woman clad in a black abaya, only her face visible, stumbled as he approached the hospital, arriving before the gates, they were even open. It was as if each step was heavier than the last, as if her feet wanted to drag her away from what she knew she should see.
When this ,, it collapsed on his knees. Black fairing it fell, dark auburn hair tumbling out as she unleashed a scream filled with pain so it felt like a claw gripping my throat.
I first arrived cool cookie jars in Baghdad a few weeks before the US-led invasion. A cloud of fear and secrecy one Iraq; residents that spoke to me of double entender or slipping scraps of paper scrawled with cryptic messages from me.
Certainly, many Iraqis wanted to be rid of Saddam. They so desperately wanted what America promised - democracy and freedom. But their desire was tinged with a pair of deep and deep-seated mistrust of the United States.
Few could have imagined back then that's just what America's democracy project cool cookie jars would make the nations. How all that was familiar would be worn away, how violence would tear communities apart, how society would have to adapt to a different brand of evil more terrifying than fear under Saddam - one they did know how to navigate.
Elation coupled with shock that many felt as Saddam's statue came tumbling down - hope that suddenly a world of opportunities would open - evaporated almost as quickly as the regime collapsed.
Toppling of the statue in a Baghdad square in April 2003 would have ushered in a vibrant cool cookie jars Iraq as the Bush administration promised. Rather, it stands as the pivotal point of lost opportunity. States, with no post-war cool cookie jars plan, was helpless to prevent the country from falling into chaos.
Devastating mistakes by the U.S. administration in Iraq - such as disbanding the Iraqi army and the de-Baathification campaign - alienated a sizeable chunk of the population and lay the groundwork for the Sunni insurgency. Shia militias emerged and thrived.
Ten years on, the war has left more than 134,000 Iraqis and 4,800 Americans dead and cost hundreds cool cookie jars of billions of dollars. It has left in its wake a nation whose government tends to look to the east - this means that Iran - a state of the United States can not count on as an ally.
Baghdad was home for me, my permanent base, from 2003 to 2010, and since then I have taken or created every opportunity to return. It is something I have had to fight for the times, a fight fueled by - the answer is yes - my attachment to the land and its people. But also by a fundamental belief that we can not abandon the history of Iraq, in how he plays the current dynamics of the region and the changes sweeping the Middle East. Nor can we abandon the Iraqi people - a people always pay the price for a war in which they had no say, a war for which they have not yet been finalized.
It is the stories I want to share because even today 10 years on the effects of war and the mistakes they made America still linger - placed cool cookie jars on him to such a degree that many countries do not recognize, do not recognize that