Sean Penn's back in Baghdad and surprisingly his reports are much more even-handed than you may have expected after the hullabaloo over his last trip.

If the Hussein regime could be credited with anything, it would be with keeping obsessively complete records of the atrocities the regime itself committed. (Pol Pot and Hitler shared this habit.) Many of the death warrants are signed by Hussein. Our tour ends in a room of moldy documents piled head-high and wall to wall, representing some of the lives claimed under this horrific regime. Our guide makes the point simply: "We will put all these names in a museum as a way to say thank you to all those who sacrificed their lives on the long road to reach freedom." It's a reminder that it wasn't only the Americans and coalition forces that "liberated" the country. There were tens of thousands of Iraqis who lost their lives opposing the regime as well.
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For Iraqis, there was no pro-war or anti-war movement last spring when the United States invaded their country. That, in their view, was a predominantly Western debate. They're used to war; they're used to gunshots. What's new is this tiny seed and taste of freedom. It is a compelling experience to have been in Baghdad just one year ago, where not a single Iraqi expressed to me opinions outside Baathist party lines, and just one year later, when so many express their opinions and so many opinions compete for attention. Where the debate is similar to that in the United States is over the way in which the business of war will administer the opportunity for peace and freedom, and the reasonable expectation of Iraqi self-rule.
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The presence of Syrian businessmen and Iranian tourists highlights the irony of the Iraqi situation. Syria and Iran each want their piece of the Iraqi pie. Fundamentalist Syrians send suicide bombers to distract the United States from a regime-change policy in Syria, while fundamentalist Iranians want to impose a theocracy in Iraq through puppet Iraqi political leaders. To look across this restaurant at all the floor-length black Islamic dress (they are referred to as BMOs, "black moving objects") is to view Iraq as Iran would like to see it.

--SFGate