OUR GUYS DOING GOOD AGAIN. 1st Brigade and 16th Engineer soldiers. And this is one of the better good news stories I've read lateley about the situation in Baghdad .

“What we need are labs, badly,” said Amhed Jaafar, 18, a pharmaceutical student in his first year at the university. “[Looters] destroyed all of them, and now we work under heat with no lights, but we still study. … The situation is sad, and it wasn’t the [U.S.] troops, it was a reaction from the people who lived many years under oppression.”

Marwan Hamed, 25, is part of a 10-student team named the Pioneer Group, a band of students formed April 24 who, armed with AK-47 rifles, patrol the university grounds at night, watching for and confronting would-be looters and robbers.

“One night, they came to a building and they tried to burn [it]. They were threatening us with guns, and we shot at them,” Hamed said.

“This is my college, my home, my country. I love it and I won’t permit any person to destroy it.”...

...Much of the work that has been done to restore the university would not have been possible without the U.S. Army, and Al-Hiti said he owes the military a debt of gratidude.

Read the whole thing here.