Wednesday, June 18, 2003

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.

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