ANOTHER REASON SHE CAN'T COME HOME SOON ENOUGH

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Army Spc. Christiansen Cory was talking with another soldier when he felt something smack his forearm.

“We were standing around and heard a pssssst,” he said. “It felt just like a big rock had been thrown at me.”

But when Cory looked down, he discovered it wasn’t a rock that hit him. At his feet was a bullet from a Kalashnikov rifle. It was still warm.

The round likely came from an Iraqi who fired it into the air in celebration of a wedding, the birth of a child, or, for nothing in particular.

Every day, sometimes several times an hour, an Iraqi somewhere in the capital is shooting his rifle into the sky because he is happy about something. It is Iraqis’ version of a party noisemaker.

The only problem is, what goes up must come down. And sometimes the bullets they fire into the air fall and hit people.

Cory, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, was lucky. The bullet left only a welt that disappeared in a few days.