Michael Ware

Journalist

Aug 2004

TIME: High Noon on Haifa Street

By MICHAEL WARE

The booby-trapped artillery shell detonated shortly before midnight. In the roar and smoke, bodies ripped apart. Suddenly the nine-man foot patrol from Task Force 1/9, composed of infantrymen and cavalry troopers, was down to five, alone, in a darkened Baghdad alley and cut off from help. One soldier was dead. Three others lay bleeding but still alive as fire from AK-47s rained down on the scrambling troopers. Company commander Captain Thomas Foley hollered orders above the din, desperately trying to stave off the attack while getting some kind of aid to his wounded men. One had lost a leg in the massive blast; two others were critically wounded. Grenades were lobbed down from houses and apartments above. Foley banded the survivors together to cover their fallen comrades. A minute elapsed, then another and another. The onslaught didn't cease, but they held on. Forty more minutes would pass before rescuers could fight their way to them. It felt like a lifetime.

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TIME: Uniting to Resist?

By MICHAEL WARE

Intense fighting broke out last week between U.S. troops, backed by Iraqi forces, and fighters loyal to the radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. But while al-Sadr's Mahdi militia represents a serious threat to Iraq's stability, an equally vexing challenge to Iraqi order is taking shape in the Sunni Muslim--dominated area northwest of Baghdad, where Sunni terrorists, Baathists and nationalists are thriving.

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