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My email I sent to Mr. Al-Hattar:

Dear Mr. Ahmad Al-Attar,

Thank you so much for your positive and encouraging words in The Scientist. Amazingly, we Americans can become discouraged by the constant opposition to our efforts to liberate the Iraqi people. There was opposition to the war within our country and around the world before, during, and after the main battles. Now we hear continually of American soldiers and Iraqi citizens dying, but not of the progress that is being made. Your article supplied that lack.

Thank God for the Internet, so I can get a truly balanced picture of what is happening. I read Iraqi citizens' "blogs" and first hand reports from Iraq, free from any media "filtering". Thus I know the Iraqi people have some power, some water, and much more freedom. I thrill to read of the blossoming of hundreds of newspapers and political parties, even those with whom I disagree. Only in a free marketplace of ideas can bad ideas be thoroughly disproven and destroyed forever.

I am an middle class citizen in the middle of the US, in Peoria Illinois, 8,000 miles (13,000 km) from Iraq. I have a wife and three children, and never have I been so thankful for my blessings as I have been since the Iraq war. We pray for you and your country daily. May the blessings of God be upon you.

Sincerely,

(my name)

For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.