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73 Iraqi protesters have been shot dead by Iraqi security since the start of anti-corruption protests a few days ago. This is a massacre. Even during the recent protests in Sisi's hyper-repressive Egypt we didn't see this.
Perhaps what's worst is the knowledge that there aren't any quick demands that can address the underlying problems for which the protesters rose. Corruption in Iraq is like a cancer in the political system and cannot be solved by shuffling figures.
No doubt, there will be attempts to placate (alongside the repression in the streets). The problem is that we're dealing with a political system of incentives that's so messed up, it cannot be fixed in a few weeks or months or even years. I do not blame any Iraqi for being angry.
In a way this reminds me of last year's protests in Jordan (which weren't as large as this, and didn't meet nearly the level of repression we've seen here). But they share one thing - changing the people in the government will change very little, or nothing at all.
This makes the crises in these countries those (that are "democracies*" in the procedural sense) more of a long term problem. There isn't one single dictator you need to remove to start to fix things. You don't have a hated figure to focus your anger at, so it goes everywhere.
*I mean "democracy" here in the procedural sense. Iraq is actually classified as a hybrid regime and ranks 114th on the democracy index. It's also the 11th most corrupt country in the world according to the corruptions perceptions index.
