"THAT'S A BIG HAPPY FOR THE IRAQI PEOPLE"

With Saddam Hussein out of power, normal Iraqis are experiencing something different, something liberating.

We taste something. We can't recognize that taste," said Talib, an Iraqi who works for the state tobacco company. "We [are] happy ... because when we switch on the television you never see Saddam Hussein. That's a big happy for the Iraqi people."

The price of the factory bus ride is the same as it was under Saddam ... free. Women sit next to women, but they are not forced in the back.

The tobacco company used to work around the clock. Now it's open just six hours a day, when there is electricity. There are eight men assigned to Talib's 30-year-old packing machine, but just two do any work.

America pays the salaries of $60 a month -- in part, to keep the 2,000 workers quiet. But the future of a state-run monopoly with outdated machinery and no government to protect it is uncertain.

"America now like father," Talib said, "Iraqi people child. They want anything from that father he must give him, 'til that child grown and be a man to feel what that father do for his child."