A Note on Fear

There was another attack on the base today. Closer than previous attacks, but this time, no serious injuries and thankfully, no deaths.

It happened this morning, and I was in the chow hall eating. Suddenly, the siren went off "BRRR, BRRR, BRRR...Incoming, incoming, incoming." Everyone stopped eating. A few people got down off of their chairs and considered crawling under the table. That would have been silly. If a mortar or rocket hit our building and came through the roof - that little plastic table won't do you much good.

I didn't have my body armor with me. None of us did. Going outside to get to the bunkers was out of the question, as we were safer inside than out. So I continued to eat my french toast. After all, I was hungry, my lunch hour (breakfast is my lunch) was short, and I had to get back to work once the attack was over.

"Boom, boom, boom" I exchanged a glance with the guys around me. We guessed the location based on the sound. Boom was certainly closer than whump. But still a good distance off. After about six impacts, there were no more. A few minutes later, the all-clear sounded.

Something a friend of mine back home said has been running around my head for a couple of weeks. After I described an attack on the base, she said that my nonchalance really worried her.
Why, I wonder?

She seemed to have wanted me to have more fear about that particular event, or express more concern. The fact that I didn't kind of shocked her.

First of all, make no doubt about it. I am not some Bravado-filled, 18-year-old kid, who thinks nothing can happen to him. The kind who skateboards, skydives, or jumps his pickup - Dukes of Hazzard Style. Even so, there is a philosophy that only those who take risks can truly be said to live. Or as Friedrich Nietzsche, the late 19th Century Philosopher, said, "Live Dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius!"

Of course, Fred was always a bit of a shock jock, and almost everything he said must be taken with a grain of salt, as hyperbole. But he nonetheless had a point. Living your life based on fear, being - as one philosophy professor I read opined - "the ultimate couch potato" can hardly be said to be living much at all. When you reach old age and look back at your life, you need to have some achievements to point to that you can be proud of. Not that they all have to involve risk, but they have to be real, genuine. It can't be that you watched every episode of some T.V. show.

My own re-evaluation of my belief in "invincibility" came back several years ago when I was injured in a farming accident. I fractured three vertebrae in my back, and had I landed a little different, could have been paralyzed. It was the kind of moment that made me sit up and think. Or more accurately, lie there on my back, keep frantically pressing the little buzzer until the nurse came in to give me more morphine...and think.

But rather than pull in and avoid risk - avoid life - I decided to take a much more discerning view of it. Risk is one thing. Stupid risk is another. Don't avoid risk just out of fear. Accept it, grow comfortable with it, minimize it, but live your life. That's really the only thing you can do. Just as we were all at one point paranoid teenagers afraid to take the car out onto the interstate, we outgrew that fear, gained confidence and turned our 1980 Pontiacs up the on-ramp of life.

That is how you deal with fear. You figure out the dangers, improve yourself to avoid as many of them as you can, and you go out there, into the world, and face them.

I guess if you played semantics, you could make a distinction between different types of fears. There's healthy fear, paralyzing fear, and angst.

Angst, in the German, is kind of a general, all-around fear of life, the universe and everything. When you're afraid of the future, worried about the state of youth, global warming or the coming of the Great Pumpkin...that's angst.

There's really not much you can do about angst. It's beyond you, unreachable, inviolate. So you just live with it. For me, in college, I dealt with angst through poetry, and in fact, most of the romantic poets - Keats, Shelley, Byron and Coleridge, were all about angst. Beethoven was angst defined. The Fifth Symphony is a practical explosion of angst, mixed with a good dose of "Sturm und Drang" - Storm and Stress. In his Ninth (and last) Symphony, he turned the minor-chord angst into a passionate, major chord euphoria.

Angst can either eat you up or motivate you, as it did Beethoven. Sometimes it does both, as the Ninth shows so well.

Moving on to the more specific types of fear, we have what I call healthy fear and paralyzing fear. They're really the same kind of fear, met with different responses.

Healthy fear is learning a danger, developing a plan of action that minimizes it, staying cool under stress and implementing that plan. Paralyzing fear is just what the name implies. It's not meeting your fear, but surrendering to it.

Put simply, healthy fear is keeping an eye out as you walk around, looking for dangers, or mapping out in your mind the locations of all the bunkers, so you can find them even in the blackness of night. Paralyzing fear is just cowering. Hiding.

The first kind of fear is a vital instinct for survival that God or evolution (I tend to see the supposed conflict as irrelevant, since one is a cause and the other is a mechanism) put into us. Primative man knew that when he heard the saber-toothed tiger roar, it was time to pull out the spear or climb into a tree for protection.

The second kind of fear doesn't actually make you safer - but does exactly the oposite. Paralyzing fear leaves you numb, unresponsive, panicked. And panicking has never saved a single person in the history of mankind, unless by sheer luck.

The panicked man rolls up into a fetal ball, which is nice and convenient for the saber-toothed-tiger to chew on, and saves him the effort of chasing him down. The man with healthy fear is active, not passive, and lives more often than not.

Ultimately, healthy fear does not guarantee your survival, and panicking does not guarantee the opposite. But your odds are better when you keep your wits, turn your fear instinct into a positive fear response, and do your best to meet the challenge.

As we left the dining facility, dawn had come, and black smoke curled up into the sky in one direction. We walked in the direction of work and, coming around a corner, caught a glimpse of a sheet of flame rising up from beyond a building. Of the six or seven shots they sent over us, only one had hit anything substantive. We couldn't tell, but it looked like it may have been a parked car. For those there at the scene, fear - paralyzing fear - would have done them absolutely no good at all. For the rest of us, healthy fear - rethinking our emergency response plans, putting our noses back to the grindstone and getting to work - was the only real option.

Medals for the departing troops

As new folks like me move into our positions, others, who have been here, put in their times, and done thier jobs well will move on. Yesterday, on the balcony of the palace, we had a small ceremony for four departing members of our unit.

Members of our unit who will soon be departing,

and who received various medals for their service.

Our team.

(Two Navy personnel, one Airman, and the rest are all Army.)

Al Faw Palace

Al Faw Palace, Baghdad

Situated in the Southwest corner of Baghdad, sandwiched between the city and the airport, is a vast complex of buildings built by the Iraqi government. But these were no mere ministries, no place where the average Iraqi could visit and see his government in action. No, this place, known as the Abu Ghraib Palace complex (not to be confused with the prison) was restricted to an elite, the plundercrats of Ba'athist Iraq.

It was once a stunning Dictator's Disneyland. And today, it is the headquarters of the Multi-National Forces-Iraq.

It was ironic that I left my work at the ornate Texas Capitol, working every day amid splendid architecture and tourists to uproot myself to Iraq, and wound up...in a palace.

None of this I knew beforehand. Training for all contingencies, I spent months training in Humvees, shooting, and learning the special "tiger crouch" walk - a zig-zag pattern of movement designed to disrupt the aim of snipers. I planned for the worst, and ended up...here.

Not that I'll never need those skills from time to time. But the vast majority of my work is done indoors, in air conditioning, in what is more or less an office environment. Not that I'm complaining. I'm 35 years old and trained for a certain kind of work. I'm not an 18-year-old kid just out of school and full of piss and vinegar. But nonetheless, after all my training, it's a bit of a letdown.

So here I am, 6,000 miles from Austin, once again working in a place where tourists take photographs of the door hinges. Only these tourists, just like in Saddam's time, aren't the average Joe...or Abdul. They're almost all soldiers or contractors.

The two buildings - Al Faw and the Texas Capitol - are an interesting study in contrast. At 450,000 square feet, Al Faw is bigger than the Texas Capitol's 360,000, though the Iraqi building is much more square, than the Texas Capitol, which is elongated. The Texas Capitol has an ornate stone exterior and a relatively plain interior. Al Faw's exterior is dull sandstone, but its interior is filled with beautifully-polished marble and ornate designs.Overall, both buildings impress. But the Texas capitol does so with a tasteful, democratic grandeur. Al Faw does so in an excessive, jaw-dropping display of Oriental, authoritarian excess.

Al Faw Palace is one of eight built by Saddam Hussein during the mid 1990s as a luxury retreat for himself, his sons and leaders of the Bath Party. It's built on a vast complex of several palaces, arranged around a massive man-made lake, and several smaller lakes. At the same time that Saddam was complaining that his people were starving and Iraq was chronically short of water, he built this mammoth compound, consuming vast percentages of the Iraqi budget, and diverting immense sums of water that could have been used to irrigate crops.

It was upon seeing such things that Gen. Tommy Franks dismissed the United Nations "Oil for Food" program as "Oil for Palaces." The Palace, like many Saddam constructed, was built to honor great military victories. Dozens of these palaces exist. There's the "Victory over Iran" Palace, and the "Victory over America" Palace.

What?

That's right. To Saddam Hussein, the 1991 Gulf War was a victory for Iraq. Despite the fact that his army suffered a humiliating defeat and was expelled from Kuwait lost around 20,000-30,000 deaths in combat versus allied deaths of around 500, Saddam saw his own survival as proof that Iraq had won. As is so often the case with dictators, he was the state, and the state was him. As Louis XIV said, "L'État, c'est moi!"

Al Faw Palace was built to honor one of those "great" victories, in this case, the liberation of the Al Faw Peninsula in Southern Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. In 1986, a surprise Iranian attack led to a dramatic Iraqi defeat, and occupation of the Peninsula, which lies in Southern Iraq and juts out into the Persian Gulf. Humiliated by this reverse, Saddam massed 100,000 Republican Guard troops and launched a counter-offensive, supported by massive artillery barrages and chemical weapons, which caused immense casualties among the Iranian troops.Al Faw was reconquered, and Saddam considered it his greatest victory. He proclaimed a national holiday, and after the 1991 Gulf War, began work on the palace. When it was dedicated, it ostensibly claimed to be in honor of all the sacrifices made to win back Al Faw.

Writing at the entrance of the palace reads:

Peace on Faw in its defense

Peace on its land and its name

Peace on the honorable ones

Peace on the sacrificial blood.

However, despite these general platitudes, no names of the thousands of Iraqi soldiers who died are stenciled on its walls. Instead, it is Saddam's initials which are ever-present. It reminded me of Santa Anna's statement at the Alamo, when his generals urged he delay his attack to reduce the risk to his men. Santa Anna replied that he wanted his men to die, because only blood would consecrate his victory. After all, he added, "What are soldiers but so many chickens?"

This bridge connecting the palace and the mainland was hit by a U.S. precision-guided bomb. Another bridge remains intact.

A close-up picture.

The palace has a whopping 62 rooms, many are huge, ornate ballrooms, with lavish ornamentation and chandeliers. It includes 29 bathrooms, with ornate toilets painted in gold trim, and fixtures of gilded brass (most of which were long-ago "appropriated" by the ground troops who arrived in 2003 and are now replaced with more simple ones.The main hall has a massive dome - wider, but also shorter - than that in the Texas Capitol.

The rotunda area of the palace.

Another view inside the palace

The dome is ornately decorated with intricately-carved reliefs in geometric patterns, amid which one can see Saddam Hussein's initials, written in beautifully-scripted Arabic, everywhere.The centerpiece of this building, however, is the massive crystal chandelier which hangs from the center of the dome. With 234 lights, it fills the space, hanging down like a giant, luminescent inverted jellyfish.

The top of the dome, from which the chandelier hangs.

The chandelier. It is probably 25 feet tall.

And as opulent as it was, built at a staggering cost amid some of the world's worst poverty, the Al Faw Palace - one of Saddam's greatest and most notorious achievements - was not his only palace. It was hardly even his favorite. In fact, this Neuschwanstein of Baghdad was not even enough to get the dictator excited.

Saddam, it seems, only visited the place six or seven times.

Intricate designs fill the ceilings, even in the side hallways. These aren't just painted on, they're carved - or more likely, molded.

More Al Faw Photos

More Photos of Al Faw Palace

The top of the dome - detail

The chandelier, viewed from the Third Floor.

In addition to the big chandelier, there are dozens of smaller ones - each of which would be the impressive centerpiece of a wealthy American mansion. These are just in the hallway.

A banister on the second floor.

One of the stairs. Notice the massive chandelier that runs down the middle of the stairs from the third floor to the first.

One of the 16 massive marble columns in the main rotunda area.



"Saddam is the greatest...dirka...dirka..." Notice the missing letters. I expect they're on Ebay by now.

This is a throne given to Saddam Hussein as a gift by Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian terrorist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At least Al Gore never paid people to hijack airplanes...would have required too many carbon offsets.

(Notice in the middle is a model of the Dome of the Rock, the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jeruselem. You can also see the stains from all the Sweaty GIs who have taken a break from the rigors of war by kicking back on the deposed dictator's throne.)

Hi Mom!

Dodge City

Movin’ On Up…

When I first got to Baghdad, I was living in a place called “Tent City” – a dreary, depressing collection of long, green tents. There are actual beds in these tents, though they’re really poor quality, with smelly, rumpled mattresses. It reminds me of my time living in a crumbling, 65-year-old non-airconditioned dorm at Texas A&M, where our mattresses had tags on them, reading: “Property of the Texas Department of Corrections.”

You know you’re in Texas if your college students are getting hand-me-downs from your prisons.

But I digress…

Tent City

Tent City is filled with large gravel-like rocks, which makes walking difficult, at times, but which I hear is a much better alternative to sand once the Iraqi rainy season arrives. Other parts of Camp Victory, such as the areas around Saddam’s old Bath Party buildings, have sidewalks.

Tent City is basically a temporary refuge until the soldier in question can secure more permanent berthing. Unfortunately, the walkways inside most of that berthing are not all that much better.

Fortunately, all the while I was gone on emergency leave, my name slowly climbed up the waiting list for permanent housing. So, shortly after my arrival back in Baghdad, I got the news that I was approved to move into…a trailer!

Dodge City

People get very creative with their names over here. And basically, whoever gets here first gets to name things, and they basically stay that way forever. Thus, the wide variety of names of bases. There’s the obvious patriotic ones – Victory, Liberty. And then there are some that probably don’t help us in the PR department when translated into Arabic, like Camp Slayer. Not sure if it’s named after a person or a bad 1980s hair band, but either way, it’s not the best of names.

Highway routes across the country have their own names, which avoids using Iraqi road names, confuses possible enemies, and allows for a ton of creativity. In one area, the routes are named after football teams: Route Packers. Route Titans, etc. In another region, they’re named after beers. Route Bud Light. Route Strohs, Route Amstel. In yet another part of the country, the earliest troops seemed to name them after their girlfriends: Route Amy, Route Vanessa. Route Shaniqua. (And no, I’m not kidding).

Here on Victory, the massive permanent housing at least got a cool name, which in a way, kind of fits: Dodge City.

It’s just like the old west town that inspired the name. People strut around, with pistols slung on their hips, or rifles over their shoulders. The streets are wide, dusty, and full of potholes. And the Filipino women at the laundry drop-off sometimes wear body armor as they chat in Tagalog.

O.K., so maybe that didn’t happen in the old west, but you get my point. Dodge City fits, in a way that "Boardwalk" or "Highland Park" wouldn't.

Downtown Dodge City North. My home.

O.K., O.K., I admit it’s not much to look at. But in a nice, sweltering, stifling, rock tripping, uncomfortable, hacking-up-dust-hairballs-all-day-long kind of way, it’s got it's own subtle charms.

It even has all the amenities: shower trailers, latrine trailers. All hidden behind massive concrete walls. It’s a good thing there aren’t any Germans with spraypaint and sledgehammers around, because I’d never get any sleep if there were.

Like Tent City, there are rocks everywhere, but because it’s a much larger place, most of the ground is still sand. Still, big mounds of dirt are pre-positioned everywhere, so they can be spread out as needed once all of this sand turns into soup.

Dodge City North has one big landmark, a 30-40 foot something that I call the “Termite Mound.” A relic of Saddam’s time, I have not the faintest idea what this building was, or what purpose it had. About the closest I can guess is, it’s some kind of massive bird house.

Whatever it was, it is an architectural disaster so immense that it alone – forget about Weapons of Mass Destruction – justified the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the destruction of Saddam’s regime. I mean, look at this thing. Can a person who will authorize construction of something so hideous be entrusted with the lives, welfare and taste of 25 million Iraqis?

Of course, now that I think about it, the same thing could be said of the Austin City Hall, and nobody’s rolling into that town with a bunch of tanks, guns and airplanes, shooting the place up. Although I must admit, the idea is strangely tantalizing to this particular Aggie.

The one thing good to say about this building is that someone before me has stamped it with a sign of true culture, which hopefully will survive and endure past our departure and leave the Iraqis with something to add to their museums:

A subtle hint of culture amidst the chaos, dust and backwardness of Baghdad:

Within Dodge City North – and Dodge City South is about the same, just no termite mound – the trailers are aligned in precise rows, perfectly arranged so that not a single one of them – or not mine at least – is within a minute’s walk of a latrine. Getting up to go at night can be an annoyance. Trudging through loose rocks in your flip-flops makes it worse. Having stray bullets land on your doorstep (as they did to a friend of mine) when the Iraqi soccer team wins a match can be even more tedious. And sometimes, when the base is on higher alert, you’re supposed to put on your body armor for the trip.

With all those headaches, I think I could make a killing by selling chamber pots.

Row of trailers in Dodge City.
Note the BBQ grill on the left.

My own particular trailer is nothing special. There are three rooms, each with separate doors. Each room is about 13x13, has two beds, and two wardrobes. Otherwise, there is nothing in them.

At the moment, I have no roommate, so I get the trailer to myself. Normally, I’d prefer to have company, but since I mostly work at night, and usually sleep in the late afternoon and evening, it’s probably a good thing.

I went to the base exchange and bought myself a folding chair, and found a small, fold-up computer table. With those little additions, I’m happy. Some folks go all out, and have carpet, televisions, lamps and other amenities. But as I spend almost all of my time working or sleeping, I don’t really see what the point would be.


It’s not much, but it works, and I’m not complaining. I’ve lived in better, but I’ve also lived in worse. It’s just one of those things one has to accept over here. After all, I didn’t expect to live in a palace.

…But as it turns out, I do get to at least work in one.

But I’ll save that story for next time.

Mention on Capitol Crowd blog

I recently got a write-up on the new Capitol Crowd blog. It's a pretty cool honor. This is a new blog, but it has a lot of potential for the Austin political wonkworld.

Thanks again to Annette in Rep. Chisum's office for the write-up.

http://capitolcrowd.blogspot.com/

A Feeble Attack on Hope

Unless the media has done a dramatic reversal in the last few weeks, it probably still isn't telling you about all the good things going on in Iraq. Al Anbar province, which was once a hotbed of violence (remember Fallujah?) is now relatively quiet.

Even Baghdad is improving significantly, although it has a long way to go. We're just winding up the end of Ramadan, and it's been a lot better than it was last year. At that time, Iraq was still reeling from the bombing of the Samarra Golden Mosque, which inflamed passions - exactly what Al Qaeda wanted it to do.

Across the country, there have been widespread stories of tribes joining forces against Al Qaeda, and against the insurgency. Despite death threats, ordinary Iraqis are taking to the streets to battle insurgents as part of a kind of neighborhood crime watch (one can almost picture an Iraqi "McGruff the Crime Dog.").

As I returned to Baghdad earlier this month, the headline in the Stars and Stripes read, "Iraq death toll lowest in 14 months." Military casualties are down. Civilian casualties are down.

That isn't to say the war is won. Far from it. But it is a hugely positive trend that puts us in the best position we've been in for a couple of years.

But, of course, there are people who don't want that progress to continue, and no, I don't mean the Democrats. Last night, this group of folks decided to make a Ramadan statement - in my opinion, it was a desperate effort to get on CNN. As far as I know it, they didn't make the big splash they wanted, but they did make the AP:

Iraq: Attacks Kills 2 Soldiers
By KIM CURTIS – 1 hour ago
BAGHDAD (AP) —
Two members of the U.S.-led coalition force were killed and 40 others were
wounded in an attack at Camp Victory, a sprawling base near Baghdad's airport
that houses the headquarters of U.S. forces in Iraq, the military said
Thursday.

Those wounded in the rocket or mortar attack included two "third
country nationals," meaning they were neither American nor Iraqis. Most troops
stationed at Camp Victory are American but other coalition soldiers are based
there. No further details on the attack were immediately released.
Camp

Victory and other U.S. bases in Iraq have frequently come under fire, but
attacks with such a large number of casualties are rare.

On Sept. 11, one person was killed and 11 were wounded in a rocket attack. The U.S. military said a 240 mm rocket provided to Shiite extremists by Iran was used in that attack.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD8S6UIR80

For me, the news didn't come from any wire service, but in a more dramatic way. It came as I was sleeping in my trailer last night:

"Whump." A deep, indescribable sound. Not like the high-pitched, treble-like Hollywood explosions, which are all gas, flames and show. But a dark, bass-like, earthy sound, which you felt travelling both through the air and the ground simultaneously.

I woke up. I had earplugs in my ears, as it happened, since my neighbors had been playing their T.V. too loud at 3 p.m. when I had gone to sleep. I checked the clock. It was near 9 p.m.

"Whump, whump."

I sat up. In Baghdad, you hear explosions not all the time, but fairly frequently. They're not all bad, because sometimes it's our soldiers finding hidden weapons or IEDs and blowing them up in a controlled setting. Often, you never know, and go about your own business as blithely uncaring as a stroll through a field in Texas during dove season, when the neighbors are shooting shotguns off in every direction.

You know when they're close and when they aren't. These were not close close, but I could tell they were on base somewhere. Perhaps a half mile away, perhaps farther. Certainly, not as large and not as close as the one I heard on Sep. 11. Of course, I had heard that one passing over my tent, and could guess where it was coming from and going to. Here, I had no such idea. It could be aimed at a specific point, fired wildly in hope of a lucky shot, or it could be a creeping barrage that could move away from me or towards me.

"Whump..."

I groggily sat up. I switched my flashlight on by my bed and let it shine on the wall. Then, still half asleep, I reached under my bed for my body armor, and pulled it out. I put it on, then fell back on the bed, still dog-tired after a very long day. Then I grabbed my helmet and put that on.

And then, with a calm, unconcern which I guess I should find odd, but don't, I went back to sleep. Or at least rested there, knowing that wearing my body armor in my trailer - which is surrounded by concrete barriers - is about as safe as I could be.

I guess the bunkers nearby are safer, but in order to get to them, you have to cross open ground. That is not recommended during a barrage. The bunkers are meant for people who are out walking, biking, or going to the latrines, who just happen to be caught outside when an attack by indirect fire comes in suddenly.

So I stayed in my trailer. After only a couple of minutes, the barrage was over. I later found out that I had slept through the first five minutes of it, and only woke up after a few rounds came closer to my location. Not hearing an all-clear call on the loudspeakers - sometimes it can be hard inside a building - I waited for a few minutes, then took off my armor, rolled it off the bed, and went back to sleep.

Oddly enough, I experienced both of the attacks mentioned in the story above, and for the entire 18 days I was back in the U.S., nothing significant happened at Victory. The one from Sep. 11, I already wrote about in an earlier post. As for the news story, as far as I know, it's fairly accurate in the details.

To someone uninitiated, it sounds pretty hairy, perhaps, but that's not the way to look at it. We have a massive base here - larger than many small towns back home. The enemy hides in a metropolis that surrounds us on three sides and can hide anywhere. And yet, this is the best they can do? A sudden, cowardly strike, after which they certainly jumped into their bondo-colored 1978 Datsuns in a style reminiscent of the "Dukes of Hazzard" and high-tailed it before the Americans could come and introduce them to the martyric wonders of a Hellfire missle. The 300 Spartans, these are not.

Their attacks are only somewhat coordinated, and when it comes down to it, whether or not they're successful - and how successful - relies mostly on luck. As one civilian contractor put it to a female Air Force Sergeant rattled by the experience - "You could step out into the street and get hit by a General's car."

This place reminds me a lot of a college campus. Put in that context, and equated to Virginia Tech, if you spread out the VT casualties over an entire year, it is actually more dangerous than Victory. In that context, the wimpy, pathetic attempt at creating an End-of-Ramadan spectacular seems puny. Tragic as the death of two people and the wounding of others seems, put in the context of the larger mission, it will not derail the successes we are starting to see here.

But that's not the image the media wants to sell. They, like dogmatic adherents to some ancient cult of moon worship, refuse to see the objective reality in a clear, sober, scientific way. They want this to be Vietnam, even though the truth is, we'd have to stay in Iraq for the rest of my life and 30 years beyond it (at current casualty rates) and we still wouldn't catch up to that war.

The truth is, great things are going on here, and American troops continue to do their work every day despite the insurgency. Each day we are joined by more and more Iraqi Police, and while some of them may not live up to ideal standards, the majority - joined each day by volunteer groups of civilians - are fighting alongside us and making big contributions.

More and more Iraqis are starting to get a disease called Hope. It is a strange illness. The symptoms may ebb and flow, but given the right conditions, the germ will flourish. It can also be a highly contagious one, with potentially surprising results.

We've seen such hope before, and been disappointed. It sprang up in 2005 after the elections, only to be stripped away by one random act of violence in Samarra - an act of ill fortune, one might almost say, as it was totally in contrast to all of the trends. But those trends, while delayed, can returned cloaked with the mantle of inevitability if hope spreads far enough.

Already, we're seeing the seeds. Samarra was bombed again this year. The result? Practically nothing. Whereas fearful Iraqis in 2005 mistook Samarra for the beginnings of Civil War, we saw a different result this year. Realistic, righteously angry Iraqis today recognize such attacks for what they are: A desperate gamble by a group of child-murdering, head-chopping, evil thugs, who would sacrifice their own kind, spilling Arabic blood by the truckload - in order to prevent the spread of the one thing that can defeat them more than all the weapons of any army.

The spreading, benevolent virus of hope.