Chrenkoff

"There is something risible in Kerry's faith in these hopeless transactions brokered by Kofi Annan and in the United Nations itself, which is staging yet another tragic, do-nothing performance on Darfur. He surely knows there is no cavalry of Europeans and Arabs about to ride to Iraq's rescue (especially since he intends to withdraw American troops, hardly a move that will give other nations confidence). He surely knows there are no foreign funders willing to bear the financial burden, either. But, if he admits that, then much of his critique of Bush's Iraq policy collapses, and with it his confidence in the honorable community of nations--the kind of phrase of which liberals are fond. Except that the nations to which it refers are neither honorable nor a community nor, in many cases, even nations. Kerry may want to rely on their goodwill, but I don't."

"Kerry believed in the international green light (the global test), the orgiastic multilateral future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us in the past, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms further... And one fine morning-

"So we beat on, Swift Boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past (that's seared - seared - in Kerry's memory)."

"Scarcely a day goes by without some major new story about Iraq. The visit by Prime Minister Allawi, new kidnappings, campaign rhetoric, the release or killing of those kidnapped, attacks on Americans and Iraqis who cooperate with them, new leaks of reports about what has happened or is likely to happen there. None of these seems to have any significant impact on American opinion."

"We had Saddam Hussein trapped... [The President] said Saddam Hussein would have been stronger. That is just factually incorrect. Two-thirds of the country was a no-fly zone when we started this war. We would have had sanctions. We would have had the U.N. inspectors. Saddam Hussein would have been continually weakening."

"Our postwar troubles have made us believe, as if under amnesia, that the choice was between war and some kind of sustainable equilibrium. It was not. The tense post-Gulf War settlement was unstable and creating huge and growing liabilities for America. First, Iraqi suffering and starvation under a cruel and corrupt sanctions regime was widely blamed on the U.S. Second, the standoff with Iraq made necessary a large American garrison in Saudi Arabia, land of the Islamic holiest places—in the eyes of many Muslims, another U.S. provocation. Indeed, these two offenses were cited by Osama bin Laden as the chief justification for his 1998 declaration of jihad against America. Most important, the sanctions 'containing' Saddam were collapsing.

"That would have produced the ultimate nightmare: a re-energized and relegitimized regime headed by Saddam - and ultimately, even worse, his sons - increasingly Islamicizing its Baathist ideology, rearming and renewing WMD programs, and extending its connections with terrorist groups. The threat was not imminent. But it was ominous and absolutely inevitable."

"Yes, there have been difficulties. Yes, there have been mistakes perhaps many mistakes. No, you did not find weapons of mass destruction. But for the great majority of Iraqis WMD was never the issue. We don't understand the criticism of your Prime Minister. All we wanted was to be free... I appeal to you all [delegates]... to help us build a new democratic federal Iraq that would respect the lives of human beings."

"Yes I do think so. They don't know the reality of their lives. They haven't lived through Saddam. They don't know what we've been through. It is not fair of them to ask the British Government to withdraw their forces before completing their mission. They are going to harm the Iraqi people more. They are going to cause more deaths. If they are concerned about the Iraqi children they should not be asking the British Government to leave them alone at the mercy of others. The Iraqi people born 30 or 35 years ago have seen nothing but one kind of rule and that is dictatorship. You cannot just change them in a matter of day and night. People of Iraq have become strangers. We need time to be introduced to each other again. We should be given time to know one another, to see the differences, to see the options and we need all the help in the world to rebuild our home."

"The Islamic Army in Iraq, holding two French hostages, praised France's stand after it called for a US-proposed conference to address the issue of a US troop withdrawal, in a statement Wednesday on the Internet.

" 'The Islamic Army in Iraq pays tribute to the French government for its positive initiative towards the Iraqi people despite its deplorable history,' said a statement posted on the group's website. 'We hope this heralds a new era of comprehension of our causes and respect for our principles'."

"[Tory leader] Michael Howard has accused Tony Blair of lying over the Iraq war, in the clearest sign yet that the Conservative party is preparing to tap into the anti-war protest during the coming election campaign.

"The Tory leader has dismissed the Prime Minister's claim to have been genuinely misled by 'wrong' evidence provided by the intelligence services - and said he deliberately contorted evidence he was provided about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."

"Britain started to plan the invasion of Iraq months before the conflict, according to a report yesterday quoting a leaked Pentagon document. Senior British and US commanders met at a war-planning session in June 2002 and orders to prepare actual military operations were given on October 7, 2002, more than a month before a UN resolution giving a final warning to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the London Evening Standard newspaper reported."

"Britain has confirmed Australia was invited to take part in planning for the Iraq war shortly after British and US military officials started preparations nine months before the invasion.

"A report in London newspaper the Evening Standard cites a leaked Pentagon document as saying senior British and US commanders met at a 'UK and Australia planning conference' in June 2002 in Florida."

"British famous writer and journalist Patrick Seale stressed that the U.S. war in Iraq was on behalf of Israel, adding that pro-Israel neoconservatives inside the American administration supported the war on Iraq."

"Syria accused Israel of inciting the United States to invade Iraq to deflect attention from its own policies in the region, where it tightens its grip on the Palestinian territories it seized in a 1967 war.

"In his annual speech to the UN General Assembly, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa accused Israel of 'inciting Americans, first, and then the West, to wage endless wars in the Middle East'."

"The vast majority of Iraqis reject Zarqawi and his ilk - as do the resistance and its supporters in Falluja, Sadr City and across Iraq. Many even suspect that the occupation forces are somehow encouraging the likes of Zarqawi, or at least failing to prevent their crimes, as a way of obscuring the fact that most Iraqis now actively support a patriotic and widespread resistance movement."

"The President, using official duties to political advantage in a battleground state, toured Florida orange groves pummelled in three hurricanes since August which killed 100 people and wreaked billions of dollars in damage."

"Two Italian aid workers released from captivity in Iraq described their abductors as religious men who treated them with respect, asked for forgiveness and gave them a farewell present - English-language volumes explaining the Koran."

"[Simona] Torretta spoke of her enduring love for the Iraqi people and expressed worries about their hardships. 'We hope that this liberation can represent a symbol of peace,' she said.

"Earlier, Torretta was asked if she had feared for her life. She first said 'yes,' then added that the abductors had reassured them. 'They understood the work we did' for a volunteer group in Iraq, she told reporters.

"Later, the Italian news agency ANSA quoted her as saying the kidnappers eventually asked for pardon. 'They taught us and wanted to teach us about the principles of Islam,' Torretta said. 'They never touched us. They treated us with great dignity.'

"Torretta was clutching a box when she was released, and ANSA quoted her as saying it contained 10 volumes of English translations and explanations about the Koran that the kidnappers had given them."

"[Simona Pari] urged people to 'try to change the very ugly reality there [in Iraq].' When a reporter shouted if that meant pulling out troops, she replied, 'Yes, also withdrawing troops'."

"[I]n terms of the number of blogs per Internet users, Poles are right at the top, surpassing American blogger rates two to one, and that's not even counting those Polish blogs that are hosted on American domains, nor is it controlling for the disproportionately large number of Internet users in Poland as compared to elsewhere."

"* We [Poles] think we will all die tomorrow and so we feel compelled to hurry and put down every last word before the reaper comes knocking.

"* We think we are a nation of poets; unfortunately, when we try our hand at poetry it doesn't come out right and so we blog instead.

"* We are a literate nation. We read a lot of news papers and magazines. We consume the stuff like our souls depended on it. Obviously all that reading makes us want to sound off about what we have just read.

"* Our bloodline got mixed up with an Italian strain many centuries ago during years of conquest and royal travels. We are thus an expressive lot. Just like Italians. There, two stereotypes in one point.

"* We have adventurous palates and we have ravenous appetites for trendy things. We'll try anything that's new and popular elsewhere.

"* Vodka and blogging go hand in hand nicely. Have you ever tried writing a post with a chilled bottle of Wyborowa feeding a martini glass? No? Me neither, but it sounds enticing for a cold winter's night. Or, to a Pole it does. With some pickles and maybe a piece of herring on dark rye. And cold stubby fingers sticking out wooly gloves."

"Just days before Dem presidential hopeful John Kerry is set to take the stage in a debate opener projected to be seen by 70 million, photos show the senator dramatically taking on color. Is it the late September Wisconsin sun during debate prep that has turned Kerry's face to rich pumpkin-colored hues?"

"An e-mailer suggests it is just Kerry turning colors for the fall. Another writes that Kerry just wants to declare 'Ich bin ein Pumpkiner.' A third says its a play for the Great Pumpkin vote."

"Muslim extremists have been sending us a message for more than a decade. That message can be summarized as 'leave us alone.' Quit funding a right-wing Israeli government that drops American-made bombs on our Palestinian brothers. Stop arming corrupt, despised autocracies across the Muslim world--in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, to name a few--so that we can overthrow them. Let us liberate ourselves. We'll decide whether we prefer secular, modern societies like Turkey, medieval fundamentalists like the Taliban, or something in between. It's our choice, not America's."

"Whatever our intentions, and in part thanks to our tactics, Iraqis are increasingly hostile to the U.S... Since July... cutting the heads off of about 20 foreigners has given the Iraqi resistance the results it wants: fewer Americans support the war or believe it's worth the cost. Twenty versus three thousand--it's rough calculus but easy arithmetic."

"British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said he shook hands with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in New York last week 'by mistake' and because it was 'dark'."

"I hadn't expected to see President Mugabe there. Because it was quite dark in that corner; I was being pushed towards shaking hands with somebody just as a matter of courtesy and then it transpired it was President Mugabe."

"This guy is a nut-job, but a subtle enough nut-job that my very intelligent brother buys his BS. He often quotes others so he can say to critics, 'I didn't say that, someone else did.' But by quoting them, he is clearly promoting their views. Because of his subtlety, he seems far more dangerous to me than the Rush Limbaughs and Bill O'Reillys of the world who have become caricatures of themselves." [my emphasis]

"As 'Boston Globe' columnist Jeff Jacoby writes, 'The press tends to emphasize what's going wrong in Iraq because of an inbuilt bias for the negative - only the plane that crashes, not the 999 that land safely, make news. The result is that while the bad news in Iraq gets reported everywhere, the reports of good news you have to look for.' For the sake of fairness, one might add that in Iraq it's perhaps 10 or 20 planes that crash, yet even with that caveat the mainstream media coverage often gives ones the impression that the whole Iraqi air fleet has gone down in flames."

"His analogy is, of course, absurd to the extreme. If 1 in 1000 planes crashed, no one would fly because it would be far too risky. If the crash rate was 1% to 2%, as he says the failure rate in Iraq is, that would mean multiple crashes per day at every major airport!" [emphasis in the original]

"Some people on the left tried to understand the origins of al-Quaeda as really being about inequalities in wealth, or Israel's brutality towards the Palestinians, or other legitimate grievances. 'Look: inequalities in wealth had nothing to do with Beslan or Bali or Madrid,' Hitchens says. 'The case for redistributing wealth is either good or it isn't - I think it is - but it's a different argument. If you care about wealth distribution, please understand, the Taliban and the al Quaeda murderers have less to say on this than even the most cold-hearted person on Wall Street. These jihadists actually prefer people to live in utter, dire poverty because they say it is purifying. Nor is it anti-imperialist: they explicitly want to recreate the lost Caliphate, which was an Empire itself.'

He continues, 'I just reject the whole mentality that says, we need to consider this phenomenon in light of current grievances. It's an insult to the people who care about the real grievances of the Palestinians and the Chechens and all the others. It's not just the wrong interpretation of those causes; it's their negation.' And this goes for the grievances of the Palestinians, who he has dedicated a great deal of energy to documenting and supporting. 'Does anybody really think that if every Jew was driven from Palestine, these guys would go back to their caves? Nobody is blowing themselves up for a two-state solution. They openly say, "We want a Jew-free Palestine, and a Christian-free Palestine." And that would very quickly become, "Don't be a Shia Muslim around here, baby."' He supports a two-state solution - but he doesn't think it will solve the jihadist problem at all."

"He explains by talking about the origins of his relationship with the neconservatives in Washington. 'I first became interested in the neocons during the war in Bosnia-Herzgovinia. That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstiutution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent - or even take the side of the fascists'...

" 'That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act.' He continues, 'Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that - like Chomsky - looked ridiculous. So now I was interested'."

"Labor candidate [for the seat of Fairfax in Queensland] Ivan Molloy posed with a machine gun supplied by Muslim extremists and has said Australia should be turning its military on both itself and the US.

"Dr Molloy has also claimed Muslim guerilla groups should not be labelled terrorists.

"The group he posed with in the Philippines in 1983 has recently been linked by Washington to Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network."

" 'I don't want to get caught in the trap of saying I am sympathetic but I would say I understand their causes,' Dr Molloy said yesterday. But Dr Molloy said groups which resorted to violence should not be stereotyped as 'terrorists' by people who did not understand their side of the argument. 'It is no good to call them all terrorists. You have to look at the side they came from,' he said.

"In December 2002, Dr Molloy blamed Australia and the US for terrorism. 'If the West in general and the US in particular are really serious about stamping out terrorism and state promoters of this activity, we would be turning our guns not only on the Russians, Chinese, Irish, Spanish, French, virtually all our allies and even back on ourselves, but most importantly also on the US itself,' he said in a public speech...

"The Coalition [Government] last week demanded the Labor Party disendorse Dr Molloy as its candidate for the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax after he backed his wife, state [Member of Legislative Assembly] Cate Molloy, in blaming the US for the Bali bombings.

"Dr Molloy, an academic at the University of the Sunshine Coast, posted on an Internet chat room in April 2002: 'I have spent much time in Asia and Central America researching and supporting many popular struggles against oppression.'

"Last week, Labor was forced into damage control after Dr Molloy publicly backed comments by his wife that [Government Members of Parliament] were responsible for the deaths of Australians and Balinese in the Bali bombings."

"U.S. hails al-Qaida death, but wants more"

"Survey says U.S. is split, but united"

"Latham's childcare free day"

"Sipping red wine on a hillside terrace high above Vienna, Helmut pointed to the Polish church next door, convinced that the epic drama played out here in 1683 still spoke to central Europeans down the centuries.

" 'I know one Turkish bloke,' said the Viennese social worker. 'He's got two wives. Neither of them can speak a word of German. He beats them up. He's got two sons as well. They're terrified of him. They're just different from us. We're Christians. They're Muslims. And these Muslims are getting more and more extreme. It's time to make a choice. I'm against it.'

"What Helmut is against, like two out of three Austrians, is Turkey joining the European Union. Gerhard, the landlord serving him his wine, joined in eagerly. 'This is Europe and we're in danger of losing our identity with all these people from Turkey and Africa. We Christians are losing our faith while the Muslims are getting more fundamentalist.'

"Neither man wanted to give his full name. Both were keen to dwell on history. The place they were sitting, a hillside north-east of Vienna, was where 321 years ago last week the Polish king, John III, after a plea from the Vatican, marshalled a huge Roman Catholic army and went galloping down the mountain to save Christendom, Europe and Austria, routing the Turks, raising the 61-day Ottoman siege of Vienna, and halting the Turkish advance into the European heartland."

"The 'Sick man of Europe' remembered the Dead. Throughout the nineteenth century at the gatherings of the Diplomatic Corps of the Sublime Porte [the Ottoman empire], the Ottoman chef de protocol would call on His Excellency, the Ambassador of Lechistan [as Poland was known to Turks], to step forward, and an aide would announce his regrets for the ambassador's temporary indisposition."

"The response was amusing in a way. Perhaps out of tact, our visitors (they asked that we not use their names) said they hadn't seen much U.S. coverage. Most couldn't speak English. But coverage by the Arab media, they said through translators, presented a distorted picture.

"One member of the group, the only woman, said the pessimistic tone of Arab coverage was making things worse by encouraging terrorists and demoralizing those who supported democracy. Another journalist, a man in a dark suit, said the insurgents 'don't represent the Iraqi people.'

"Arab reporters, said a third, 'try to give the impression that it's hopeless. If you watch the satellite channels from Arab countries you would imagine there's no rebuilding going on'."

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi echoed these sentiments recently when he spoke before the United States Congress: "I have seen some of the images that are being shown here on television. They are disturbing. They focus on the tragedies, such as the brutal and barbaric murder of two American hostages this week... Yet, as we mourn these losses, we must not forget either the progress we are making or what is at stake in Iraq. We are fighting for freedom and democracy, ours and yours. Every day, we strengthen the institutions that will protect our new democracy, and every day, we grow in strength and determination to defeat the terrorists and their barbarism."

There are two Iraqs at the moment; both equally real and consequential. The Iraq of never ending strife - the insurgency, terrorism, crime, and all too slow pace of reconstruction makes for interesting news stories and exciting footage. The Iraq of steady recovery, returning normalcy and a dash of hope rarely does.

By the way, the "Newsweek" story did not mention even one positive development in Iraq. So here is another story - Iraq: "Maybe Not Quite As Bad As You Thought." Read the stories below in addition to - not to the exclusion of - all the bad news. Only by knowing both sides of the story you can make an informed judgment about how things in Iraq are really going.

SOCIETY: A free and democratic election in January will mark a symbolic transition of Iraq from the dictatorial past towards a more hopeful future. Just as important as the change in political processes is the change in attitudes; to succeed, Iraq needs to acquire not just the democratic veneer but also a democratic mind-set. As Iraq's "Al-Sabah" newspaper reports, the National Assembly seems to be on the right path, taking very seriously its role in scrutinizing the government's performance:

"The national assembly undertakes its most important tasks in reviewing the government's decisions and question officials in the government, to get acquainted with their performance and causes and outcomes of failures. High ranking source at the assembly affirmed that the minister of interior will be the 1st minister to be questioned about the background of security deterioration in addition to other accusations in employing his relatives in new positions at the ministry."

"We have very good things happening in Iraq because of help from America. I am very thankful and grateful for our liberty and our freedom because with (America's) help, we can get Saddam Hussein out of our country. I feel very sorry for the families who gave their sons and their daughters who were killed in our country. They are putting their lives on the line to help us."

"On this day, many of the roughly 100 students in attendance are from the education sector - the school principals, administrators, and officials from the Ministry of Education. They were level eight functionaries - the most senior Ba'ath party officials allowed to remain at their jobs, because they have skills that Iraq needs.

"The class can get emotional. Part of the curriculum includes showing the students photos of mass graves, many of the people victims of Saddam Hussein's massacres of the Kurdish population after the Gulf War.

"Mr. al-Furaiji says in a previous session, he showed his students a photo of a Kurdish woman holding her child who had been killed by chemical weapons. He says, one of the students stood up and said, 'It makes me sick to think I was a member of the Ba'ath party'."

"It has been nearly a month since the Kurdistan Communist Party first began broadcasting a daily program on relationship issues facing Kurdish youth. It is the first time such a controversial programme has been broadcast in Kurdistan. Some religious leaders have expressed their opposition to the programme, but the programme is proving to be highly popular amongst the younger audience.

"The presenter of the programme, Mr Bahez Husain speaking to KurdishMedia.com, said 'The idea of this programme first came to mind when I heard a religious man advising the younger generation not to use mobile telephones as it is a sin. I decided to encourage the young people in my city, Sulemani, to telephone me on their mobiles, to express their views on different issues that they face.' The program allows young people to express their emotional problems, anonymously. Until recently, such 'forbidden' issues were not discussed.

"Mr Hussain said, 'The programme has been a huge success. I receive over 100 telephone phone calls during each programme. Unfortunately, due to the shortage of time, I can only deal with 30 to 40 calls in each show.' The programme has already influenced a youth union and a women's union to open a friendship club and a Cafeteria for couples here in Sulemani."

" 'I love Iraq,' says five-year-old Amir Hussein as he practices with friends at the pitch on Abu al-Nawas Street, a once-popular promenade on the banks of the River Tigris, now deserted amid the persistent insecurity gripping the capital.

"Amir shares the same ambition as 10-year-old Hussein Ali Jaber and the rest of the 120 children who gather for weekly training on a playing field that was once reserved for the security agents of Saddam Hussein. 'I want to represent Iraq. I love football and I love to play with my friends,' says Hussein...

" The 40-year-old former member of the national squad admits that the number of children joining the club has increased since Iraq's men reached the quarter finals at the Athens Olympics in August. 'Lots of children were eager to play football after the Olympics. It was a great team and most Iraqis had the chance to see guys playing live on television,' says [Amer] Fadel."

"It was a perfect evening for baseball. Parents crunched pistachios to the ding of aluminum bats. Soldiers from the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade stood guard at the soccer field-turned-ball diamond, with a Humvee parked at each outfield foul pole and another sitting just beyond the center field fence.

"The youngsters - Kurds, Turkomen and one Arab - belted line drives, scooped up grounders - and booted a few, too. Parents cheered as their boys chased down fly balls and hurled them home, where overzealous runners were tagged out."

"There's an old Arab proverb: Throw a lucky man in the sea and he will come up with a fish in his mouth. As Iraq rebuilds its economy, the country's businessmen are hoping that Mr Taha Ahmed Abdul Salam will prove to be a lucky man.

"This 40-year-old's onerous task, the lucky fish he's been asked to deliver, is the new Iraq Stock Exchange (ISX), a centrepiece of the country's financial reconstruction. (It's a replacement for the former Baghdad Stock Exchange, a now-defunct plaything of Saddam Hussein's family, especially his late son, Uday.)

"The news so far is good: At a time when many Iraqis find themselves in very stormy seas, the ISX, of which Mr Taha Ahmed is chief executive, is able to report progress."

"The Iraqi Ministry of Planning has formed a supreme body to lay down reconstruction strategy for the war-torn country... The body would be responsible for laying down an international mechanism to finance the reconstruction projects and to help coordinate the efforts of the Iraqi side and the donor countries in the fields of loans and financing."

"Nearly 200 Iraqi and international construction contractors heard this week how reconstruction efforts in the country's southern region will soon quicken, providing a renewed infrastructure and additional jobs. The demands and opportunities that come from the planned massive surge in reconstructing the south served as the keynote of the region's first reconstruction forum at the Basra International Airport...

"The more than 10 new medical clinics, 400 renovated schools and new police stations planned for the region are slated for construction before the end of the year; each is aimed at improving the aging infrastructure of southern Iraq and adding thousands of jobs across the region."

"The Planning Ministry and Development Cooperation has discussed the strategy of social development to create suitable environment for comprehensive humanitarian development... Dr. Mehdi al-Hafdhi said that the reform plan includes putting limits for long-term social reform representing in realizing protection and social justice and participation through judicial mechanisms to eradicate poverty, make work chances available and realizing the social incorporation. 'The ministry's middle-term preparations took into consideration the role of the government through shifting to the market economy without neglecting its role in supplying requirements of security, health, primary education,' he confirmed."

"The Paris Club of creditor nations has agreed in principle to a major reduction of Iraq's outstanding debt, with a final announcement expected before the end of this year... Officials from the Paris Club's 19 members, including the United States, France, Russia, Germany and Japan, met last week and agreed to cut Iraq's estimated 120 billion dollars (97.9 billion euros) of debt by at least 50 percent."

"Iraqi labourers have installed a new radiator on a generator air intake. It’s an installation that increases electricity output of the machine by more than 15 per cent by cooling the hot, dry desert air. The radiator, known as a chiller pack to the electrical savvy, came online Monday at the south central Iraq power plant, boosting electricity production from the generator to 24 megawatts, enough to service 72,000 Iraqi homes."

"Melted plastic tubing and heat warped glass vials will soon be a thing of the past for doctors and nurses at Ibn Sina Hospital, the busiest medical facility in Iraq and one of only three Level III trauma centres in the country. The reprieve comes courtesy of the first climate-controlled medical storage facility in Iraq, which opened Sunday only metres from the front door of the hospital. The new warehouse will provide an end to the destructive heat, with enough air-conditioned storage space to store tons of medical supplies to treat the county's most seriously wounded soldiers and civilians."

"Providing clean water and a viable sewer system for the airport is the final step in a multi-million dollar effort to revive the airport and reopen commercial travel in the southern region.

"A $1.3 million renovation project to revamp the water treatment plant is slated for completion by the end of October. The plant was operating at full capacity before the war, pulling millions of liters of water from the nearby river. However, it lacked maintenance and chemicals to render water suitable for human consumption."

"When Kings Mountain Middle School teacher David McDonald took leave to serve with the National Guard in Iraq, he never expected to end up helping children over there. But through a special bond with a former student, McDonald inspired a community service project that resulted in 1,400 pounds of school supplies being donated for Iraqi children. Five Kings Mountain churches participated in the drive, which is continuing this fall."

"Ten cancer patients in Iraq could soon get urgent treatment, which is currently unavailable in their own country, thanks to an appeal in Bahrain. The patients, some of whom are children, have been diagnosed with life- threatening cancer and are now in desperate need of help.

"The Bahrain Cancer Society (BCS), in association with Al Riwaq Gallery and the Bahrain Businesswomen's Society, has raised BD25,000 [$66,555] and is urging people to help support the patients with further donations."

"Soldiers from the 133rd Engineer Battalion are working on a series of projects in the rural village of Hamzan in northern Iraq. The National Guard Soldiers from Belfast, Maine, replaced the village's small mud schoolhouse with a concrete structure. The new school has three classrooms with plumbing and electricity.

"As part of an initiative to train former Peshmerga fighters to learn construction skills, the engineers worked with nine former fighters to train them in masonry and carpentry skills during the construction of the school.

"In addition to rebuilding the village school, the engineers brought in a 20,000-liter water tank and a 75-kilowatt generator which will serve the 17 families in the area who do not have plumbing or electricity. They also improved the local roads which were in disrepair."

"If [Ahmed Mutlok]Oda seems unnecessarily timid, consider that no one in Wynot has ever voted before. Oda has no predecessor, no way to know if he's doing it right.

"After Oda, another 145 voters came through, representing almost every household in this tiny village about 15 miles outside of Tikrit. The Wynot City Council elections of Sept. 13 came after months of work and planning by soldiers of Company A, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division.

"The strong turnout completed a turnaround in how Wynot residents view the U.S., according to the company commander, U.S. Army Capt. David Krzycki. 'This was probably the most anti-coalition town in sector when we first got here,' he said. 'Kids and adults were throwing rocks at us and calling us names. But we established a knock-and-talk program, where we'd go to six to eight houses per night. We'd ask people what they needed and what they thought of us. Eventually they realized we're here to make their way of life a little bit better'."

" 'I knew looking at this boy that it would be almost impossible for him to live any sort of normal life,' Martinez said. 'He would be condemned to a real minimal existence.' Martinez took a photo of Adjir Abdullah to the company surgeon. After working through a maze of red tape and going from one doctor to another, he and the surgeon found a pediatric orthopedist serving in the U.S. Army. 'We had to break a lot of rules,' Martinez said.

"Martinez then returned to the village to convince the boy's family to go ahead with surgery. 'They told us they don't trust Americans because we don't do what we say,' Martinez said.

"The boy's family eventually agreed to the surgery, and after a lengthy procedure to correct the Adjir's feet, his uncle confided in the soldiers and thanked them. 'He said, "Adjir would never have had a chance under the old regime. Now he has a chance,"' Martinez said. '"The old regime only cared about themselves".'"

"A billboard bearing Saddam Hussein's blasted-away face still welcomes motorists to the city once honored - now stigmatized - as his hometown. But these days Tikritis show little of the ex-dictator's storied defiance of the U.S. military.

"Tikrit was the epicenter of Iraq's Baath Party hierarchy and the al-Nassiri tribe that filled the party's upper ranks, making this city an important U.S. invasion target and a rebellious occupation conquest. But in the past few months, Tikrit has quietly slipped off the map of Iraq's trouble spots."

"Each day, hundreds of residents turn out to shout down rebel Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. They blame him for leaving Najaf in ruins and blame his henchmen for slaying as many as 300 people.

" 'Muqtada is garbage and his people are all crooks,' demonstrators chanted Friday. That's an extraordinary slur for a man who is the son of an assassinated spiritual leader and merits the honorific, Sayyed, as a descendant of the prophet Muhammad.

"This kind of outburst was unthinkable three weeks ago, when al-Sadr and his armed followers ruled Najaf and its holy shrine and led a nationwide insurgency against the U.S. occupation. He flouted centuries-old tradition to defy the key spiritual leaders of Iraq's Shi'ite majority. He drove them into seclusion and their followers into fearful silence.

"Now, the besieged have turned the tables, raising questions about how deep and broad al-Sadr's support actually is. Al-Sadr posters and pictures tacked up around the city streets and neighborhood shops have been torn down. The police, whom al-Sadr's fighters drove from their Najaf and neighboring Kufa compounds last spring, have now packed their jail cells with the cleric's followers."

"A year and a half ago, Ari Askanda would have been risking death selling Western music and DVDs from his small shop on the main street of Biyara in Iraq's Kurdish zone. Now he even sells alcohol under the counter.

"This remote mountain region near the Iranian border was a stronghold of Ansar al-Islam, a militant group linked to al Qaeda and Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant thought to be behind a wave of suicide attacks in Iraq."

"The motives of those willing to take Iraq's most dangerous jobs reflect not only a desire to feed their families, but a vision of a self-sufficient nation that doesn't rely on American troops for its security.

"In the battle for Iraq, insurgents are targeting the new police - attempting to undermine support for the interim Iraqi government cooperating with the US. But Iraqis generally hold their own security forces in high esteem. Even though these forces are rebuilding, opinion polls show higher respect for and confidence in the new Iraqi forces than in the US-led forces."

"Trainers were brought in to help the rebuilding of the Iraqi police force, specialists in every field. They started from scratch, identifying officers that could be trusted to command the new units, establishing structures, setting up police academies and even building the classrooms.

"Seven months into the job, they are finally tackling the task that they hope will set them on course to a fully effective police force: getting rid of the dead wood. In a room on the tenth floor of the ministry of interior, men are clustered round lap-top computers and sophisticated fingerprint scanners...

"Each computer package cost $15,500 and they will have 400 of them, paid for out of a $13 million budget for this qualifying committee project alone. It is a drop in the ocean compared with the overall cost of the policing operation. Brigadier Mackay reckons he has spent $1.5 billion since he arrived, the largest police training mission ever undertaken."