Weaving through the open-air market in this old city on the Tigris River, Lt. Scott Smiley stopped to chat Thursday with a few men sipping tea outside stalls conspicuously empty of customers. Sides of beef swung from hooks next door, and the singsong chant of the muezzin filled the early afternoon. “The coalition must provide security here — there is no security,” Saeb Salih Mohammed, a graying 40-year-old, told Smiley, explaining why his bins of nuts remained untouched and why he would not vote in elections scheduled for next month. “Otherwise, how do we do this?” Smiley, a blue-eyed 24-year-old from Pasco, Wash., assured Salih Mohammed that help was on the way from the novice Iraqi security forces now being trained by U.S. soldiers. Moments later, as Smiley paused to talk to a merchant with a shop full of flour sacks, the popcorn crackle of automatic-rifle fire sounded from where his platoon stood guard at the end of the street. Hunched, he ran into the emptying avenue, reaching his men to find a pool of bright blood beneath the wheels of one armored vehicle. A sergeant had been wounded. Full Story
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