Word: ramadier
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...region every day said they've witnessed a sea change and welcomed the celebration. "I've seen the full transformation of Iraq," said Marine Warrant Officer Bobby Garza, who works on a team of 40 U.S. advisers helping train a 9,000-man Iraqi Army battalion near Ramadi. Garza said he's working on the second half of his fourth tour in Iraq. "It's a beautiful thing," he said from his spot on a wall outside Government Center, which was the focus of al-Qaeda attacks for most of the last four years. "We wouldn't have been sitting...
Osama bin Laden's latest call for Iraqi insurgents to unite against Americans fell on deaf ears this week in Ramadi, the city that al-Qaeda leaders once declared the seat of a new Islamic caliphate and capital of the Iraqi insurgency. Rather than rise up against them, the people of Ramadi Tuesday invited U.S. forces to watch a massive parade - albeit one so tightly secured that no pedestrian traffic got close to it. The almost surreal, two-hour martial procession was led by the city's children to commemorate the martyred leader of a tribal revolt that has virtually...
Tuesday's two-hour convoy - which wound through more than four miles of bullet- and bomb-ridden city decimated by the very worst of the war - celebrated the life of Ramadi's favorite son, Sheik Sattar Abu Risha, the romantic icon of the region's sudden turn against al-Qaeda and Islamic extremists. Though Sattar was killed by an insurgent's bomb on Sept. 13, his "Awakening" movement lives on and his image adorned police cars, armored vehicles and city walls for Tuesday's parade marking the end of 40 days of mourning. Hundreds of Iraqi police officers and soldiers...
There was a lot of trepidation. Ramadi's civilian crowds, who remained out of sight to both the media and the VIPs, were held back for several city blocks from the actual perimeter of the parade for fear of a bomb or other attack. No explosions occurred, but without crowds, the entire event seemed merely a dress rehearsal staged for the benefit of the dignitaries and press, a marching band playing to empty streets. Military officials joked nervously about the possibility of venturing out of the secured area around Government Center to get a sense of the general turnout. American...
...before their names every make the news. Time and again sheiks whom U.S. military officials reach out to wind up dead. Sattar's knack for surviving repeated assassination attempts made him all the more important to American leaders. It's difficult to imagine anyone who can replace him in Ramadi, and no one like him has come on the scene elsewhere in Iraq...