I read this five minutes after reading a Ventura County Star interview with a UC Santa Barbara (liberal university) professor who'd been to Iraq and found the people positive and hopeful, to his surprise. Guess you see what you want to see in Iraq.
You're right. In most cases, a person's perceptions of Iraq tell you more about the person than about Iraq.
Why are you mischaracterizing that article? Yes, he did say that he sees hope but only with respect to Shiites and Sunnis working together and "...in the way people talked about the coming election and the chance to rebuild their future."
More excerpts from the article:
"...there was a kind of feeling they (Americans) shouldn't have been there in the first place.'"
"At night, he would turn off the air conditioning in his hotel room and listen to the white noise of guns firing in the streets. A suicide bombing rattled the walls so hard he thought there was an earthquake.
"Humvees were everywhere, carrying coalition soldiers armed with machine guns.
"The voices of Iraqis hardened when they spoke of the military occupation.
"Posters cited human rights violations in reference to the sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, claims of illegal detention and the perception that Iraq's identity is being tossed aside in favor of a jerry-built imitation of the United States."
And the professor "...still sees the possibility of the violence and assassinations spiraling out of control toward an anarchy that once begun would be nearly impossible to stop."
http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/county_news/article/0,1375,VCS_226_2994510,00.html (Free registration required)