Saturday, November 15, 2003

"GOD BLESS THE POLICE"

I'd call this progress. You?
Women and children stared down at the ruckus from sheet-covered balconies. Startled peddlers stood frozen by their donkey carts.

"God bless the police!" shouted a shopkeeper as the men in blue passed by.

"What took you so long?" called out another.

Such a happy scene would have been unimaginable a year ago. The Iraqi police force was as tainted as the rest of Saddam Hussein's security forces, feared for its casual brutality and powers to spy, residents said.

But there in person was the police chief of Baghdad, Hassan al-Obeidi, smiling as he walked with his troops past the ramshackle car repair shops with mufflers hanging from the doorways like sausages. Even more astonishing to the onlookers, Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim, deputy interior minister and boss of the Iraqi national police, strode along at the head of the procession, asking, even pleading, for people to help him fight crime.

"Help us to protect you and preserve security," General Ibrahim, wearing a black bulletproof vest and a black Gauloises cap, shouted through a megaphone above the din.

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