Word: iraqi
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...Cheney noted that "we have been safe for six years." She did not mention that almost 4,000 U.S. service members and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have lost their lives. But history might note that. Lawrence J. Martin, Elburn...
Just a dusty mile or so from where a fellow platoon leader was recently killed by a powerful roadside bomb, Army 1st. Lt. James Vansandt piles out of a Humvee and sets out with his Iraqi translator into the darkness toward the crowded main street of Musayyib, a ramshackle Shi'ite town set along the Euphrates River some 40 miles south of Baghdad. Robed men are gathered in clusters on benches and around tables brought out after the daily ritual of breaking the 12-hour Ramadan fast. As his platoon fans out into the shadows on both sides...
Vansandt and his men are risking a nighttime foot patrol through Musayyib to gauge local support of a recent program enlisting volunteers from the town and surrounding villages into ad hoc militias supported and paid by the U.S. military. When he asks the Iraqi men how security is in town, they all smile and nod and chat among themselves excitedly. "Good. Good. Already we to go to the peace," says Salih Ibrahim, 50, an art teacher who speaks rough English and who tries to translate questions from his friends. Ibrahim says one region to the east of town still swarms...
...patrols. His superiors say JAM has been threatening residents, and have even killed the entire family of a man who had worked with the Americans in the area. Braving that kind of intimidation is a lot to ask of volunteers, leaders say, but any gains made will be Iraqi gains that only they can win and hold...
...climb back aboard their Humvees and roll slowly back through the town, which has already emptied save for donkeys and dogs and trash. Winding through the dust along the river bank toward their base, the soldiers pass through several Iraqi police checkpoints and then through one more where three young men had earlier stood wearing civilian clothes and carrying Kalashnikovs - the newest local squad of concerned citizens. "Wave and smile if you see 'em, guys," Vansandt tells his men. "They're on our side...