America,
Let's exchange mementos…
Take Saddam Hussein…and give us Abraham Lincoln
Or not anybody…

This is the pining of exiled poet Saadi Yousef. Born in Basra in 1934, his extreme anguish finds expression in America-America, an anti-war poem he wrote last February before the bombardment of Iraq. In his anxiety and apprehension, he wondered what the US version of the Iraqi leadership would be like. It is impossible to expect a "N