Word: houres
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...knot begins to form in my stomach exactly at 8 a.m., when I step into the small Fokker F-28 jet that will take me and 50 other passengers from Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad. I know what lies ahead: an hour's uneventful flying over unchanging desert, followed by the world's scariest landing--a steep, corkscrewing plunge into what used to be Saddam Hussein International Airport. Then an eight-mile drive into the city along what's known as the Highway of Death. I've made this trip more than 20 times since Royal Jordanian's civilian flights started...
...landing in 2004, a retired American cop wouldn't stop screaming "Oh, God! Oh, God!" I finally had to slap him on the face--on instructions from the flight attendant. Another time the man in the window seat was a muscular, heavily tattooed Polynesian ex-commando who spent an hour telling me of his life as a mercenary in a succession of South Pacific island nations--stories that often ended with his punching, stabbing or shooting somebody. When the Fokker began its steep descent, he began whimpering to Jesus and grabbing my forearm so tight, I felt my palm...
...revenge for the previous week's bombing of the market in Sadr City. Al-Hashimi's response was to claim that militiamen had planted the bomb, deliberately killing their fellow Shi'ites in order to justify revenge killings of Sunnis. "They were able to attack Sunni mosques within an hour of the market bomb," he said. "This has to have been premeditated...
...past few days, all of them his fellow Shi'ites. The bodies were decapitated, the heads never found. He tells me how, since a suicide bombing in a nearby neighborhood, his wife has been suffering anxiety attacks when she goes shopping. I feel ashamed that a mere hour's worth of Baghdad's reality has brought me down; Wisam and his family live it all the time...
...million, is vastly outgunned by the Israelis, who spend more than $9 billion a year on keeping one of the world's most advanced armies equipped with cutting-edge American technology. "There is no way we are going to get the army into this conflict because within an hour it would be decimated," said one government official. "The only official orders the army has are to 'react if attacked directly' and it has already been attacked directly. The army can do nothing...