They are Iraqi-Americans who left Baghdad long ago, yet still have parents, brothers, sisters and friends living there. Now they divide their days between television and silent telephones that no longer offer a link to those trapped in war.

They say theirs are the voices of refugees who fled the Saddam Hussein regime, and they are uneasy about reprisals on relatives still in Baghdad. Yet they also warned that the American assault on Iraq was producing a counter-reaction from a public intimidated by a dictator yet angered by what seemed an invasion rather than a liberation.

"We are the silent opposition to Saddam Hussein," said Khalid Alfaris, a Los Angeles insurance manager who has lived in the United States for 30 years.

Recalling the torture of his brother by Saddam's thugs, and the disappearance of three of his wife's cousins, Alfaris said he worried that the war would strengthen the Iraqi dictator because so many were suffering from the American attacks.

"Iraqis hate Saddam, but they are a nationalistic people and they will reject what they see as an occupation," he said. "They see Americans as invaders, not liberators. It was a wrong assumption that they would greet them with cheers and flowers."

Alfaris' 25-year-old daughter, Areez, a beautician, was born in the United States, yet continues to cherish her Iraqi heritage. She recalled childhood visits to Baghdad and being taken by an aunt to buy traditional clothes at a market.

"That market is gone now," she said. "It was leveled by the bombing. That saddens me."

Acknowledgment of the plight of Iraqi Americans came recently from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who reported traveling to Dearborn, Mich., home of the largest population of Iraqis in the United States, to hear what he called "wrenching stories" of what they had endured under Saddam.

At a meeting in Washington with Iraqi-Americans, Wolfowitz emphasized that the United States was not trying to impose a government on Iraq. "The essential idea is that the government has to represent the people," he said. "Until the Iraqi people are free to express themselves, we can't know what they really want or think."

He added that the United States understood that at a time when death squads were at their backs, Iraqis would be careful about committing themselves to liberation.

"We understand the history and the caution it inspires and we are not encouraging people to revolt in circumstances where we can't assure their safety," Wolfowitz said.

Anwar Majeed, who left Iraq for Los Angeles three decades ago, broke down as she described how she had spent her days since the war began two weeks ago.

"I worry about my family in Baghdad so much that I have nightmares about the bombing and I wake up crying," she said. "I see horrible things in my dreams and there is no one to speak for us."

Alfaris and others criticized what they termed America's failure to support an Iraqi uprising after the first Gulf War in 1991.

"I am a U.S. citizen and I love America, but when Iraqis tried to overthrow Saddam after the war, they got no help," said Alfaris. "What is happening now is strengthening Saddam."

He pointed out that over the past 12 years, Saddam had controlled the United Nations oil-for-food program set up as compensation for sanctions against Iraq. That meant he could dole what he chose in rations, which tightened his grip on the nation, contended Alfaris.

Living with fear has made many Iraqis "numb to what is going on around them," according to A.R. Salbi, a Los Angeles real estate broker who has lived in the United States for 35 years.

Salbi said he had an extended family of dozens of relatives still in Iraq and was spending hours daily trying to reach his brother, a doctor who had set up a field hospital in his home in Baghdad.

"American Iraqis are all in the same position, watching this day after day, and it tears my heart out," Salbi said. "This is a nation where fear is normal and now they are afraid of the Americans, too. They feel America let them down after the Gulf War and now this."

Ban Al-Wai, an immigration attorney in Los Angeles who was born in the United States, said sadly, "All we can do is watch television and hope we don't see members of our families among the dead. You recognize the place where an uncle lived and see how close the bombing is to his house."

She reported that before American bombing cut telephone lines, her friends in Baghdad would call and ask, " What have we done? If they wanted Saddam, why didn't they kill him?"

Mike Roaf, a construction manager in California's Orange County, was another trying to re-establish contact with a mother and three sisters in Baghdad.

"We are all refugees," he said. "I am against any war. In my opinion, we should have a secretary of peace and democracy instead of a secretary of defense."

Zainab Salbi, Iraq-born director of Women for Women International, a Washington-based group that provides aid to female survivors of war, said she hoped to go to Baghdad after the war to help. Recalling a recent visit to Iraq that ended a few days before the war began, Salbi told of women university professors so fearful of losing their jobs that they would not answer questions about the economic situation in their country.

She recalled the words of a 24-year-old woman called Ghayda'a, a manager in a sausage factory, when speaking of the future.

"She told me that dreams for the future are things of the past. Now, we just want to survive."

Even bleaker was the philosophy of Umm Ahmed, who ran a small store while her once-affluent husband looked for work. Asked about the coming war with America, according to Salbi, Umm Ahmed said, "One more bomb does not make a difference. Maybe it will finish us and relieve us from this life."