For army finances of 2010, the budget of the Department of Army on overseas contingency operations raises up to $663.8 billion. When, in October 2009, the budget was signed by the President Obama, the final budget for the Department of Defense was $680 billion. Extra $37 billion supplemental bill was also passed in 2010, to assist the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The GAO said that serious financial problems of the USA Army had made financial statements in auditable.

Due to prolong defense system problems, payroll systems have affected thousands of soldiers and have left them underpaid while they are serving in the wars against terrorism. But the military is focusing on those who were overpaid, as many of soldiers who are now returning home have been alleged to be indebted by the Army and other military agencies. They are following these soldiers most frequently for debts they don’t even know about.

Government Accountability Office reported that round about 1,300 Army of USA was injured in battles and those soldiers who were either killed or left the army had almost $1.5 million military debts during the Operation of Iraq and Freedom deployment. Within this sum, about 900 injured soldiers had $1.2 million debt and about 400 dead soldiers had $300,000 debts on them. Thus USA conspiracy is to earn cash from their soldiers and has made their life a total mess.

Thus, hundreds of injured soldiers were trailed for accumulation of army debts burdened on them without any of their fault. Take the example of a 25, a retired staff sergeant who had lost his leg on a roadside bomb explosion and he is trying and spending to fend off $2,231 debt on him. The situation is worsening day after day for the USA Army as the US Government Accountability Office could not deliver a review on the financial statements of the 2010 US Government. London civilians are offered the services of findmanandvan.co.uk that range from household to office removals. Findmanandvan.co.uk fulfils all needs and includes every aspect of removal for residential owners as well as business customers.

Of course, that’s not a good enough answer for the pencil-pushers back home. Since we’re not fully manned, they’re sending us some extra bodies to get us up to 100 percent.

This is mostly a good thing. We can always use new blood. While they didn’t all volunteer to come here, most of the “augmentees” have taken to their new jobs with, if not with eagerness, at least with some degree of professional pride.

The notable exception is a guy that I will call “Tom.” Tom volunteered to come to campervan rental New Zealand. I’m always happy to have another volunteer, but I had to wonder why he chose to leave his own “safe” unit to come halfway around the world and perform a somewhat dangerous mission. I suspected that he was running away from something. As it turns out, Tom has a whole menu of personal issues, including a recent painful divorce, a run-in with law enforcement, and a diagnosed case of clinical depression.

Tom was acting strangely, and was displaying a little bit of a short temper that surfaced under stressful conditions. I asked a few of his fellow augmentees if they had any insights into his behavior, and that’s when the stories started to emerge.

(Memo to the personnel folks back in the rear: please don’t send me anyone who will create more work for me than he actually performs).

Tom had stopped taking his medication, because he “ran out and couldn’t get a refill.”

I sent him to a doc for a psych eval. The doc said to “keep him away from the weapons” until he has “stabilized” and could be “re-evaluated.” Needless to say, this somewhat limits his usefulness in a potential war zone. In the meantime, I’ve found a “safe” job for him to do, and continue to evaluate his behavior. He seems to be improving, but how can I be sure he won’t suddenly regress?

Then there’s the guy I’ll call “Frank.” Frank does his job, and does it well. At the same time, he makes it absolutely clear that he doesn’t want to be here. His current plan to get back home involves taking advantage of the archaic “last surviving male in the family” exception. This one dates back to the Civil War era, when it was critical for every family to have a male heir to carry on the family business or mind the farm. Those days may have long ago faded into memory, but Frank doesn’t care. He’d probably wear a dress like Corporal Klinger if he thought it would get him home.

What Frank has failed to realize, no matter how often we tell him, is that the time for him to claim this exemption has passed. It’s obvious to everyone involved that he is trying to “play” the system. His situation today is the same as it has been for several years, and he never said a word about it until he was mobilized. By volunteering to remain in the Reserves, he declared that he was willing and able to fight for his country in a time of need.

That time is now.

“Frankly,” I feel like strangling the sumbitch. It is clear that he was only in the Reserves for the extra money and the pension. Like many others, he was gambling that he would never be recalled to active duty. He lost that bet.

Now it’s time to pay the banker. Sorry, Frank.

It occurred at 1319 GMT on Monday and was imaged by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which sits in space at a gravitational balance point between our star and Earth.

The giant prominence at the bottom left of the image is more than 30 times the Earth’s diameter. Such prominences are not uncommon on our star.

If they are directed towards the Earth, they can lead to dramatic lights in Northern and Southern polar skies and also radio and communications interference. Researchers say that this particular explosion was directed away from Earth.

Hot but faded

The prominences are gigantic loops of magnetic fields that emerge from below the Sun’s surface. As they rise, they become filled with trapped, superhot gas that is heated to many millions of degrees.

Soho is a US/European satellite designed to study the Sun

Sometimes, as the magnetic fields become twisted and unstable, the magnetic energy collapses and explosively heats vast quantities of gas which then bursts and rises off the Sun in just a few minutes or hours.

The image taken by the Soho satellite is in the spectral line of singly ionised helium (He II) in the extreme ultraviolet region of the spectrum.

The material in the eruptive prominence is at temperatures of 60,000-80,000 Kelvin, which although extremely hot is still much cooler than the surrounding corona, or outer atmosphere, which is typically at temperatures above one million K.

Researchers followed the eruption as it moved out in space and faded.

It was dark in my room except for a pale ray of moonlight coming through the window. Suddenly the floor began to tremble and a loud roaring sound broke the silence “What the…!” I thought. Then something really creepy happened. That pale ray of moonlight vanished leaving me in total darkness.

“First an earthquake and now the moon has vanished. Is this the end of the universe?”

Not a pleasant thought for a very secular person like myself.

I finally found the courage to get up and look out through my window. Two meters from me was a line of Stryker Armored Combat Vehicles that for some reason had pulled over in our street.

“Phew! Not the end of the universe yet!”

After some time, the convoy moved off, their engines fading slowly as the streets swallowed them up. I stood for a moment thinking about the men in those vehicles from campervan rental New Zealand who stay up at night patrolling the dangerous streets of Baghdad to protect the few insomniacs like myself, and the millions of other sleeping Baghdadis. I said a prayer (in my own way) for their safety and went back to toss and turn in my bed.

Baghdad is still enjoying some days of relative calm interrupted only with minor sporadic incidents. In general there’s a feeling that these days are better than almost any other time in months. This is more evident in the eastern side of Baghdad than the western part, because the former part has received more US and Iraqi military reinforcements than the latter.

Checkpoints in Baghdad are becoming more abundant, with more attention paid to the exits and entrances of the city. I’m also hearing that those checkpoints have been reinforced with more soldiers and equipment.

Politically, today president Talbani visited Maliki in his office “to express support for Maliki’s security plan”. Maliki said after the meeting that operations would quickly gain momentum in the coming days, and that the troops will make efforts help displaced citizens return to their homes. In these austere times businesses are always looking for innovative ways to save money and ofetn it is the really obvious solutions that are over-looked.

Signs of such efforts can already be seen on the streets, through political work instead of military. Yesterday the “popular support” committee headed by Ahmed Chalabi succeeded in reopening a Sunni mosque in Sadr city, returning control of the mosque to the Sunni endowment department after it was occupied by Sadr’s office personnel last year. The mosque was reopened with a celebration where Sunnis and Shia prayed together behind a Sunni cleric. Before the ceremony Shia volunteers cleaned up the area around the mosque from garbage and fixed the sign that carried the name of the mosque.

Still, I don’t expect much from politicians who are behind this. They are only trying to repair their damaged reputations. I do trust the cheering crowd; the average people who are weary of the violence. They clearly expressed their desire to see sectarian portioning reversed because they have seen what forced displacement has wrought upon civilians. Those people were not thinking of the motivations of politicians or clerics. They were speaking from their hearts.

Today I heard unconfirmed news about plans to return the remaining 9 Sunni mosques to the Sunni endowment department. I hope this gesture be met with a similar move on the Sunni end in areas where Shia are minority.

In other encouraging news, I saw on the local Baghdad news that US and Iraqi soldiers have discovered about 60 weapon caches since the beginning of this month, and detained more than 140 suspects during the same period.

Other incidents that indicate a positive change in Maliki’s policy are the arrest of deputy minister of health Hakim al-Zamili, and the deployment of IA soldiers to provide security for hospitals in Baghdad instead of the FPS.

The FPS, or the “Facility Protection Service,” is widely accused of being affiliated with death squads. Members of the FPS were recruited directly by ministries through contracts not overseen by the interior or defense ministries. The loyalty of FPS personnel is believed to be toward the political faction controlling any given ministry instead of the country as a whole.

The arrest of al-Zamili indicates that the new plan will not hesitate to target leaders of militant groups no matter what their position in the government was. The Sadr movement responded to the arrest only by saying that it was an insult to all Iraqis. One of their spokesmen said, in a clear sign of helplessness, “If one from our movement is to be arrested, then others from other factions should be arrested as well”.

I don’t know whether this current attitude of submission is going to last when more senior members are arrested. Still, I like the idea of arresting senior bad guys from both sects. This both satisfies public opinion, and gives credibility to the announced plans of the government to deal equally with all regardless of sect or background.

The agency’s deputy administrator, Shana Dale, said the United States would develop rockets and spacecraft to get people to the Moon and establish a rudimentary base. There, other countries and commercial enterprises could expand the outpost to develop scientific and other interests, Ms. Dale said.

Ms. Dale and other officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the agency envisioned a base at one of the lunar poles, to take advantage of the near-constant sunlight for solar power generation. It would have an “open architecture” design to which others could add the capabilities they want.

Scott Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration, said crews of four astronauts would make weeklong missions to the Moon starting around 2020.

As more equipment was set up, human stays would eventually grow to 180 days, and become permanent by 2024. By 2027, officials said, a pressurized roving vehicle on the surface would take people on expeditions far from the base.

NASA gave no cost estimate for the program and no design details for the base. Ms. Dale said all plans assumed that the agency would continue operating from a fixed budget of about $17 billion a year.

The space shuttle fleet is to be retired by 2010, and the United States plans to scale back its involvement in the International Space Station. The station is still under construction, with a mission by the shuttle Discovery to lift off on Thursday. Ms. Dale said money would be shifted to the lunar exploration program from the shuttle and the station.

While the Bush administration and NASA have spoken in general terms about plans for a return to the Moon, followed by human spaceflight to Mars, the lunar outpost plan is the first time officials have proposed a permanent presence.

”We’re going for a base on the Moon,” Mr. Horowitz said. “It’s a very, very big decision.”

Many gaps in the plan remain to be filled in. NASA called Monday’s announcement a baseline concept.

In a televised news conference from the Johnson Space Center in Houston on the eve of an international conference there on space exploration, Ms. Dale said the plan was developed after consultation with space agencies representing 14 countries and more than 1,000 experts in space science and commerce.

“The door is open for international and commercial interests,” she said.

The lunar base plan is part of a larger effort to develop an international exploration strategy, one that explains why and how humans are returning to the Moon and what they plan to do when they get there, NASA officials said.

The planning includes an international conference early next year on setting scientific goals for returning to the Moon, including those that private interests might want to pursue.

Doug Cooke, the agency official who led the lunar study group, said the plan called for putting a lander craft down near a polar crater and later adding solar-power generating units and living quarters to establish a base.

A site near the lunar South Pole, like the Shackleton Crater, would provide enough sunlight for power generation. It is also near possible deposits of valuable minerals.

From this site, Mr. Cooke said, other nations could add scientific laboratories or observatories, and commercial concerns might want to process rocket fuel and other products from water and other materials that might be found in the ground nearby.

Mr. Horowitz said having a base did not mean that humans would go there after every lunar landing. The option remains open for some missions to go to equatorial regions, as the Apollo project landers did in the 1970s, or even to the other side of the Moon.

Getting to the Moon and establishing a base will require a versatile, general-purpose lander that could land anywhere and be the core of an outpost, he said.

“The nickname I use for the lander is, it’s a pickup truck,” Mr. Horowitz said. “You can put whatever you want in the back. You can take it to wherever you want. So you can deliver cargo, crew, do it robotically, do it with humans on board. These are the types of things we’re looking for in this system.”

Four months have passed since Castro underwent intestinal surgery and then relinquished power temporarily to his brother and defense minister, Raul Castro. Cuba postponed Fidel’s birthday celebrations from August 13 to December 2, hoping his recovery might be well along.

But Cuban authorities, who do not comment in detail on Castro’s health, have stopped saying Fidel will be back on the job full-time.

The celebrations have something of a farewell tone for many Cubans.

“I think he looks like he has the will to live, and he has been leading the country from his bed but at the same time preparing people for when he is no longer with us,” said marcher Silvia Loperon, 53.

Since Fidel Castro’s July 26 operation, he has only been seen on television and in still photographs.

Monday, activity was at a fever pitch and the volume was on high at Revolution Square. Military cadets turned out in formation, MiG fighters zoomed beneath the clouds and Soviet-era troop transport helicopters clattered by.

Young workers from several state industries were out marching with their co-workers, waving huge red, white and blue Cuban flags in the cool breeze.

The military parade Saturday at which Fidel Castro is widely expected — though his attendance is not officially confirmed — is the climax of almost a week of festivities.

Some 300,000 people are expected to march, and 2,000 guests from 80 countries, including presidents, ex-presidents and Nobel laureates are due on hand. Allies President Evo Morales of Bolivia and president-elect Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua are to attend, as is Haitian President Rene Preval.

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, a staunch critic of the United States and Castro’s key ally in keeping his regime alive economically, has not confirmed and is up for reelection this Sunday. But organizers in Havana said they would not rule out a quick visit by Castro’s close friend.

All eyes will be on the podium to see if the grey-bearded leader is present and, if he is, hazard a guess at whether he might be strong enough ever to retake the helm of Latin America’s only one-party communist regime.

For dissident Elizardo Sanchez, the birthday extravaganza “is something unprecedented; it is a pharaonic celebration that seems more like a good-bye.”

Supporters were hopeful and nostalgic.

“We expect to see our commander in his military uniform. On Saturday we are going to show that the Revolution is still on its feet and more solid than ever,” said Laura Cuadra, 52, a worker at an epidemiology center out marching.

Within a month of the operation, Castro said he had lost 18.6 kilograms (41 pounds). His usual proud frame of a statesman faded in pictures to a gaunt, elderly hospital patient.

Whether or not he returns to work full time, over the past four months Cuba has grown used to the idea of life without Fidel, the only leader most Cubans have known. He took power in January 1959.

For years, Castro’s visage was not seen on billboards bearing government slogans, as if to give it more weight elsewhere. Now, Fidel’s face, no longer everyday currency in state media, is on billboards reassuring “Vamos bien” — things are going well.

And with the baton passed to Raul Castro, 75, the public profiles of other communist leaders, such as Vice President Carlos Lage, 55, have been raised on state television. Raul Castro has kept a low profile.

Loly, a 63-year-old nurse in Havana, said privately that Fidel Castro was unlikely to return to power. “Fidel is not coming back. When he is no longer alive, the political line is going to be the same, but let’s hope the economy improves.

A biotech company seems to have done it. But early signs are the scientific achievement is not the slam-dunk solution the company had hoped.

Stem cell opponents said Wednesday that the new method still doesn’t satisfy their objections. And on the other side, many scientists and supporters of federal funding for the research called the technique inefficient and politically wrong-headed.

But a spokeswoman for President Bush, who last month vetoed legislation that would have allowed federal money for embryonic stem cell research, called it a step in the right direction.

And Dr. Robert Lanza, an executive with Advanced Cell Technology, which created the new stem cell lines, said: “This will make it far more difficult to oppose this research.”

Stem cells have become a Holy Grail for advocates of patients with a wide variety of illnesses because of the cells’ potential to transform into any type of human tissue, perhaps leading to new treatments. But the Vatican, President Bush and others have argued that the promise of stem cells should not be realized at the expense of human life, even in its most nascent stages.

The new method works by taking an embryo at a very early stage of development and removing a single cell, which can be coaxed into spawning an embryonic stem cell line. With only one cell removed, the rest of the embryo retains its full potential for development.

The method was described online Wednesday in the British journal Nature. The journal published a similar paper by Advanced Cell Technology last year demonstrating the technique’s viability in mice.

“The science is interesting and important,” said John Harris, a professor of bioethics at the University of Manchester in Great Britain, commenting on the biotech company’s efforts.

But few believe it will resolve the bitter ethical battle over stem cell research.

“This will please no one,” predicted a longtime critic of the company, Glenn McGee, director of the Alden March Bioethics Institute in Albany, N.Y.

Some stem cell researchers complain that the new approach, though it may hold future promise, simply isn’t as efficient as their current method of creating stem cells. That procedure involves the destruction of embryos after about five days of development, when they consist of about 100 cells.

Meanwhile, hard-line opponents of stem cell science argue that the technique solves nothing, because even the single cell removed by the new approach could theoretically grow into a full-fledged human. Some also object over the possibility the procedure could harm the embryo in an unknown way.

The method “raises more ethical questions than it answers,” said Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

U.S. law currently bans federal funding of any research that harms human embryos. A White House spokeswoman said the method’s eligibility for funding could not yet be determined, “but it is encouraging to see scientists at least making serious efforts to move away from research that involves the destruction of embryos.”

And now, right on cue, mainstream media is parroting the completely bogus claims of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The Associated Press version: Video on Marine killing Iraqis draws ire.

The BBC version: ‘Kill Iraqis marine song’ probe.

Both of these accounts repeat CAIR’s blatant falsehood, that the song in the video tells a story about a Marine killing Iraqi civilians.

It does not.

The BBC’s version:

The lyrics caught on video refer to the shooting of Iraqi civilians, especially children.

True, but incomplete. And the part they leave out is damning: the lyrics refer to killings of children by Iraqi insurgents. Not by Marines. Both the BBC and the AP seem to have missed this minor detail. Imagine that.

The BBC goes on:

The four-minute song includes graphic descriptions of killings, real or imagined.

The horror! We would never want anyone — let alone soldiers on a battlefield — to hear such things.

Except of course in every movie made for the last ten years.

Dressed in a green T-shirt and military style trousers and boots, a man sings: “I grabbed her little sister and put her in front of me.”

“As the bullets began to fly, the blood sprayed from between her eyes, and then I laughed maniacally.”

This description appears in both the BBC and the AP, and again, to paint their distorted, ugly picture, they leave out the most important part: the people who kill the “little sister” in this darkly humorous song are — not the Marines — but her father and brother, as they attempt to perpetrate an ambush.

The mainstream media have really gone too far this time in their smarmy rush to smear US troops, because their vile claims, based on information fed to them by an Islamist front group, can be checked.

Following the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941, the Japanese armed forces conducted military operations against U.S., British Commonwealth, and Dutch possessions in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. The first phase of these operations, which was the seizure of Malaysia, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, and various island groups in the central and western Pacific, was virtually complete by March 1942. The second phase, initiated by Japanese Imperial Headquarters on 23 January, was designed to isolate and neutralize Australia and India. In the Pacific, this plan envisioned the seizure of bases in Papua/New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, which would be used to support future operations against New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa. By early March, with the seizure of Lae and Salamaua, the entire north coast of Papua/New Guinea had fallen to Japanese forces who were planning for an amphibious invasion of Port Moresby.

By this time, two secure American naval intelligence centers were in operation in the Pacific: one in Melbourne, Australia, and another at Pearl Harbor (“Hypo”). A third, at Corregidor (“Cast”), was rapidly disintegrating under Japanese air and artillery attacks on the island. Its cryptanalysts and equipment were in the process of evacuation to Melbourne. These facilities intercepted Japanese radio communications and, through traffic analysis and codebreaking, uncovered the location of major fleet units and shore based air forces. More importantly, by translating messages and studying operational patterns, Melbourne and Hypo predicted future Japanese operations. The intelligence centers provided their analysis, through daily communications intelligence (COMINT) briefings and warning reports, to senior American commanders, including Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet (Admiral Ernest J. King), and Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet (Admiral Chester W. Nimitz).

In early March, the Japanese postponed their planned seizure of Port Moresby because of previous events. An American carrier raid on Japanese shipping at Lae and Salamaua on the 10th, along with a previously unsuccessful attempt to attack Rabaul on 20 February, had demonstrated to Commander in Chief, Fourth Fleet (Admiral Shigeyoshi Inouye), that Japanese were not assured of air superiority in the region. It was not until early May, when Admiral Inouye had three carriers for operations, that the invasion could begin. On 7-8 May, the first carrier battle of the war took place in the Coral Sea. Each side had a carrier damaged, while the American lost the carrier USS Lexington and the Japanese lost the light carrier Shoho. More important the Japanese broke off their invasion attempt. It was the first time the Japanese had been stopped in the Pacific. Significantly, American cryptanalysts had provided crucial order of battle and operational communications intelligence to the Allied commanders in the South Pacific.

In addition to this advance toward Port Moresby, evidence that Japan was intent on expanding east of the Marshall Islands appeared in COMINT in early 1942. Land-based air units and equipment began appearing in message traffic to and from the Marshall Islands and the Mandates. On 4 March, the designator “AF” began appearing in partially decoded messages. Then, on 5 March, Japanese seaplanes, refueled from a submarine at French Frigate Shoals, Territory of Hawaii, conduct a small armed reconnaissance mission over Oahu. Finally, on 13 March, American cryptanalysts both broke the Japanese Navy’s General-Purpose Code (JN 25) and identified “AF” as Midway Island.

On 16 April, after several months of discussion, Commander in Chief, Combined Fleet (Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto), convinced the Imperial General Staff to agree to his Midway and Aleutians strategy for the summer. In Admiral Yamamoto’s view, the capture of Midway Island would allow Japan to pursue its Asian policies behind an impregnable eastern shield of defenses in the Central Pacific. The centerpiece of this plan was a feint toward Alaska followed by an invasion of Midway. When the U.S. Pacific Fleet responded to the landings on Midway, Japanese carrier and battleship task forces, waiting unseen to the west of the Midway strike Force, would fall upon and destroy the unsuspecting Americans. If successful, the plan would effectively eliminate the U.S. Pacific Fleet for at least a year and provide a forward outpost from which ample warning of any future threat by the U.S. would come.

Palestine Street bisects Baghdad south of Sadr City, and it was up and down this boulevard that the Shiite militia had raced in cars and pickup trucks at the end of February, generating fears of a civil war. But there was little sense of apprehension in early May as I accompanied a patrol of Iraqi and American soldiers walking down the crowded sidewalk, politely sharing the space with shoppers.

Leading the patrol was Maj. Orestees “Bo” Davenport, 38, of Fayettville, N.C. Davenport, a burly former football player, commanded a mobile transition team stationed with an Iraqi battalion in the center of east Baghdad where Shiite militias and death squads have rampaged, terrorizing Sunni neighborhoods. Davenport doesn’t believe, though, that this violence is a “civil war.”

“I’m a military history buff. To me, a civil war means heavy fighting. That’s not what we have here,” he said. “When [Muqtada] Sadr’s militia poured into our area in February, there were killings on both sides. But it didn’t escalate. Sadr’s guys and the Iraqi army faced off, but neither wanted a real battle.”

Still, the absence of sustained combat does not signal normalcy. In shop after shop, the soldiers received the same voluble response. The economy is OK, but security is terrible. Shoppers rush home before the sun sets. Everyone closes in the early evening, which is prime shopping time. People don’t know where a bomb will go off. And robbers are walking into shops, pointing guns, and walking out with cash or kidnapping the owner for ransom. Some robbers wear police uniforms. Although anyone could buy a uniform, distrust of the police was mentioned in shop after shop.

For hours, the patrol meandered through the city, from fashionable Palestine Street to the Sunni suburb of Adhamiya, through the mixed districts of Babnal and Abdul Qadr, and into hardscrabble Al Fadhal, where raw sewage runs down mud alleyways too narrow for vehicles.

Lt. Altawee stopped before a long table that blocked half the street. Sitting on stools and broken chairs were a dozen men with weathered faces, too poor to afford coffee or tea, sitting idly, staring at the soldiers.

“Iraqi soldiers, yes! American soldiers, yes!” an older man burst out in English. “Police, no!”

“Fadhal has a mean reputation,” Davenport said. “You don’t come down here if they don’t want you here. They fought the police the other night. They don’t trust them.”

The patrol continued past a large mosque guarded by soldiers.

“Sadr’s militia tried to take it over,” Capt. Muhamed Eba, 28, explained. “We got here first. They drove up, shouting and honking horns. Then they drove away. They knew they’d lose. We have the Americans.”

He pointed his finger toward Davenport. As the twilight darkened, the traffic thinned out, and the shopkeepers began pulling down the aluminum siding that protected their storefronts.

“The Iraqi* army can block off large movements of Shiite militia from Sadr City,” Davenport said as we walked down the street. “Place two tanks at four intersections. Saddam designed the streets with that in mind. It’s a matter of will, not of RPGs.”

While Davenport was with the Iraqi soldiers in the heart of the city, most of his battalion was working in the suburbs two miles to the south. The next morning, Davenport met for breakfast with his commanding officer, Lt. Col. Brian E. Winski, who was leading the 1-61 Cavalry Squadron, 506th Regimental Combat Team, 101st Air Assault Division. Like Davenport, Winski, 39, of Milwaukee, is on his second tour.

After swapping notes with Davenport, Winski hopped into his Humvee and headed for the local market. The Humvee, heavy with slabs of armor on its doors, rolled slowly down a rutted macadam road next to the tranquil Diyala River in southeast Baghdad. Winski passed by a string of farms nestled under palm trees. Ahead was the trestle bridge leading from the shantytown of Jisr Diyala into Baghdad. Three years earlier, a platoon of Marines had seized the bridge under fire, the beginning of the final push that took them to Firdos Square, where they hauled down Saddam’s statue as TV viewers around the world watched.