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Saddam Hometown Falls Under Peaceful Spell
EFLA 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. "Tikrit is what we'd call permissive. It's not wholly antagonistic to us anymore," said Lt. Col. Jim Stockmoe, intelligence officer for the 1st Infantry Division, the Army unit that controls Tikrit and a surrounding West Virginia-sized slab of northeast Iraq. Stockmoe, puffing a cigar outside his office in one of Saddam's grandiose palaces, said the U.S. military had finally reached a "live and let live" arrangement with Tikritis. For their part, city residents say they want the Americans out, but they seem to have mostly given up supporting insurgents trying to force them out. "For me Saddam is history," said Thamir Ahmed, a 32-year-old engineer in Tikrit. "He and his name have nothing to do with our city now." This is a nice little story if you can read past the obligatory AP negative spin. Of course those people don't want us there, but when does anyone want foreign powers controlling their streets? Tikrit "gets it", and that says alot for the indiginous Iraqis vs. the so-called "insurgent" Iraqis, who are mostly from neighboring states anyway. Thanks AP. You said more than you meant to here. Posted by: Chris W. 2004-09-13 |
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