United Press International,
WASHINGTON: A young Iraqi lieutenant in a maroon beret and immaculately pressed battle fatigues paced in front of 28 children at a school courtyard in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib neighborhood in early October, smoking a thin cigarette, elegantly.
The boys had been pulled from class because they were the poorest in the school, and the Iraqi forces just now beginning to police their neighborhood had come to deliver school supplies. They are taking over not just the security mission from the Americans, but the attempt to win the hearts and minds of the community.
“What is your opinion of the Iraqi army?” he asked the boys, who were eyeing the backpacks and paper being set out in front of them.
“You are welcome,” one said.
The lieutenant told them not to listen to satellite television and the discouraging news about Iraq they carry, or to the rumors on the street that the Iraqi army draws its ranks from the military of Iran.
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