Iraqi blogger Omar has been quietly observing Arabs online (emphasis my own):

I've been visiting the BBC Arabic site in the last few days and I found a forum where people from many Arab countries –including Iraq- post their opinions about some hot topics, the main of those is Iraq and terrorism of course. I wasn't surprised to see that most Arabs (especially from Egypt, Palestine, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Syria) are forming one side of the debates while Iraqis and people from the rest of the gulf countries are taking the other side.

But I was surprised when I found that the almost all the Iraqis who took part in the debates are on our side, maybe 95% of Iraqis expressed their rejection to the violent behavior of some Iraqis and condemned the terrorists attacks on both Iraqis and the coalition saying that the Arab world must stop supporting the terrorists and the thugs from inside Iraq. It's also surprising that many of those Iraqis live in areas that are recognized to have a public anti American attitude in general like A'adhamiya, Diyala and Najaf. I feel that those people are still afraid to voice their points of view in public in such hostile atmospheres but the internet is providing them freedom and safety to say whatever they believe in.

This month's terrorist violence erupted with the partial intention of clouding the world's perception of Iraqis - we were meant to recoil in horror at telephoto lens video footage of atrocities and mischief committed by people identified as "Iraqis." Over the last ten days many on the left and a few on the right have fallen for this impression, declaring the country hostile or barbaric or otherwise hopeless. Omar's anecdote reminds us that this is not so, that optimists were and still are correct: nearly all Iraqis are not only peaceful but eager to live freely, silenced only by strongmen. The rising of Fallujan gangs and al-Sadr's louts, as well as reported collaboration between all manner of thugs, should be noted as a perfect example of authoritarianism: all appurtenant beliefs thrown away for the common objective of compelling good people into submission or complicity through brutality. The men fighting against the Allies aren't the ones we meant to be free; they're the very men from whom the Allies must liberate the Near East.