Yes and no -- I live in a campus town, home to Juan Cole, so there are those here who know something about the region. But these are largely ed'cated types, not proles. From them you hear almost nothing, save for the parents and relatives of local kids who return from Iraq either maimed or dead; and as I posted before, some of these parents, in order to smother their pain and find some justification for their children's sacrifice, accept Bush's rationale, i.e. Saddam would have gotten us sooner or later. Then there's the local Iraqi population, quite a large one, mostly based in nearby Dearborn, but some here in A2. Last time I talked to my Iraqi package store friends, one of their Baghdad cousins was killed when someone tossed a grenade into his store, and many of their relatives have had their homes invaded by US troops. They're glad to see Saddam gone (except for the public order he maintained), but know that there's more to this project than the average native-born American realizes. They obviously know something about Iraq's history.
DP