Word: basra
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Military checkpoints dot Route 6 from Baghdad to the southern city of Basra, evidence that tension persists between the Iraqi army and the rebellious Shi'ite population. At one checkpoint, passersby can see men being searched by soldiers. On a tour of Basra conducted by the local military governor, a general who reportedly commanded the troops that crushed the Shi'ite uprising after the war, foreigners are escorted by a truckload of armed soldiers with a roof-mounted machine gun and grenade launchers -- though the general insists all is peaceful in the city...
...give interviews in rooms invariably decorated with a portrait of Saddam Hussein smiling benevolently, are often reluctant to admit the extent of the health disaster they are witnessing. But signs of distress are everywhere. Many hospitals were damaged by allied bombing, including three in Baghdad and two in Basra. Completely destroyed was the only hospital in the country that performed kidney transplants and advanced heart surgery. In other cases, physical damage to medical facilities was caused by the civilian uprisings that followed...
...speaking to reporters. "Many Iraqis refused to talk to me because I had no government 'minder' with me," she says. Officials were equally reticent, frequently glancing at omnipresent portraits of Saddam Hussein as if seeking approval of their statements. Still, there were flashes of honesty. At a hospital in Basra, Marlowe asked a mother with a dying infant what had happened in the city. "She can't answer a question like that with all these people around," said the government interpreter. "Look at the pain in her eyes and you will see the answer." Says Marlowe: "I realized that only...
...speak of the needless slaughter of Iraqi troops on the Basra road, but then say that the United States left just enough of Iraq's military intact to cause the revolt to fail, as if it were some conspiracy. Did we go too far or not far enough? Make up your mind. By the way, when you're dodging ground fire in an Apache helicopter, you don't circle enemy tanks until every soldier has left his vehicle. How much time does it take for an Iraqi soldier to leave his vehicle anyway...
...White Label Scotch -- he parachuted into Kuwait as an eyewitness to war's inferno and freedom's jubilation. He watched wide-eyed Kuwaiti women flirt with their liberators. He saw Marines reclaim the U.S. embassy. And he surveyed the surreal traffic jam of bombed vehicles on the highway to Basra. "It was nightmarish," he says, "partly because it was so perfectly familiar." Plus he nearly managed to blow himself up by peering into a booby-trapped box of rocket-propelled grenades on a hotel roof...