GOOD OL' YANKEE INGENUITY.

How to read a map when you don't read Arabic.

You won't find Canal Road, California or Coors Street on the commercial street maps of Baghdad, but this is the new Iraq, where American soldiers are redrawing the city one English name at a time.

"Just go down Main Street until you hit Virginia Avenue and take a left," a Military Police (MP) officer recently told a correspondent, drawing a finger along a glossy US Defense Department satellite map spread across the hood of a Humvee in downtown Baghdad.

The black-and-white, metre-square map was overlayed with neon-coloured city streets whose names looked better placed on a layout of Washington.

Oklahoma and Pennsylvania replaced street names in the industrial section of the old city framed by historic Al-Rashid and Khulafa streets.

Read the rest here.