"We haven't found any in at least a month," he replied. So it looks like I'm going to have to settle for just seeing lots of poverty-stricken bombed-out neighborhoods instead.
Next we stopped by a female doctor's office and a pastry shop. "See those big white sacks over there? Notice how they are all stamped with the UN logo?" That partially explains where the food is coming from in Baghdad. There were at least 50 sacks, weighing 50 pounds each.
We walked past an outdoor market bazaar and a huge empty space. "Soccer field," said the Iraqi man standing next to me. "Ask the Americans to build us a soccer field." Right now it looked like it was being used as the city dump. Everywhere we went the neighborhoods were shabby, the streets were littered and water that looked suspiciously like sewage pooled in the streets. And almost every single man and boy that we saw wore a soccer jersey.
PS: I got an e-mail from my daughter Ashley this evening. Everyone at her job is trying to marry her off. Me too! I wish I could pack up about ten of the really nice soldiers I've met here and bring them back with me so she could pick one out. Project Runway, military style -- or should I say "Batchelorette"? I should write an article about that. "Batchelorette Iraq".
And I just lost yet another pen. What's with these pens?
And I also just got e-mail from some woman named Virginia saying that my reporting about the Beagle Boys was "silly and embarrassing". Sigh. But you don't see many Beagle Boys out here in Iraq. Everyone here has a job to do and does it. The Beagle Boy types to stay back in Washington and spend their time hounding John Edwards and Paris Hilton.
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