CALM AND DESPAIR IN BAGHDAD

By BRENT SADLER/BAGHDAD

On the rooftop of an Iraqi government building in Baghdad, a gun crew went through its paces again and again. The troops were working hard to improve the time it took to prepare their antiaircraft battery for action. On the street below, a taxi driver looked up inquisitively at the scurrying soldiers. "Is there going to be another attack?" he asked his American passenger. Everyone in Iraq's capital was wondering about the answer.

Though the news in Iraq is edited to reflect whatever message Saddam Hussein wants to convey, the people knew last week that they again faced the threat of war--brought on, they were told, by "a U.S. conspiracy." But there was no visible panic; the weary souls of Baghdad have been in this spot many times before. "These attacks are not strange to us. They are normal," said a city shopkeeper. "We know they hit military, not civilian targets," he added with a smile.

The mood is one of growing, if discreet, discontent. Baghdad residents have noticed fewer portraits of Saddam around town. In one area, Iraqis claimed that officials took down his pictures after citizens smeared them with excrement. Iraqis have clearly had enough of the hardships caused by economic sanctions, and Saddam's putting all the blame on the U.S. is wearing thin. Iraqis have seen their livelihood collapse and their savings eroded by inflation. "We've sold our refrigerator, our sitting-room chairs, our beds," said a young man in a juice shop. "Now my family is sleeping on the floor." Nowhere is the agony more visible than in the hospitals, where doctors complain about shortages of basic drugs and syringes. At a children's hospital outside the city of Karbala, southwest of Baghdad, the sweltering, fly-infested wards are jammed with youngsters suffering from diarrhea and dehydration. "I've already lost two children, and now I am about to lose another one," said a young mother with tears rolling down her cheeks. A driver in Baghdad told a similar story about the deaths of a sister and a three-year-old daughter. "We had no money, no medicine to save them." "What future do we have?" he asked with remarkable candor. "Our problem doesn't come from America. It comes from within."

--By Brent Sadler/Baghdad

Brent Sadler is a senior international correspondent for CNN.