Riding the Tube at 2am To Sadr City

Passed Out Drunk on the Subway, A True Urban Classic For Any City

Iraq's cabinet has earmarked $3B for constructing a subway line in Baghdad:

The subway is the first in Baghdad and will have two lines. One would run 11 miles from Shiite-dominated Sadr City in the east to the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah in northern Baghdad. The second line would be cover 13 miles and link the mixed neighborhoods of central Baghdad to the primarily Sunni western suburbs. Both lines will have 20 stations.

That would've been unthinkable in 2007 with sectarian violence rife in Iraq's capital, and only recently did the bridge from Kadhimiyah and Adhamiyah get reopened. Good for them. But I can't fairly characterize Iraq as a "modern democracy" until hippies start bitching about stupid trees getting cut down whenever the government wants to build new infrastructure so people can get to work on time.