Life in claustrophobic Baghdad 'jail'
BBC News
The top US military commander in Iraq is soon to report to President George W Bush on progress in containing violence in Iraq. He will use a series of benchmarks to measure success or the lack of it. Richard Galpin has returned to Baghdad after two years to see what change there has been.
As my plane made the steep, tactical descent to Baghdad airport, I was thinking about those much debated American benchmarks and realised that, almost subconsciously, I had developed my own.
Mine are, of course, deeply unscientific and highly personal - if not slightly eccentric - but they help.
The first is the width of our street.
When I first came to Baghdad just after Americans troops had marched in four years ago, we lived and worked in a normal street.
We walked around freely - even at night - taking just basic security precautions.
But this did not last long.
(Continued here.)
The top US military commander in Iraq is soon to report to President George W Bush on progress in containing violence in Iraq. He will use a series of benchmarks to measure success or the lack of it. Richard Galpin has returned to Baghdad after two years to see what change there has been.
As my plane made the steep, tactical descent to Baghdad airport, I was thinking about those much debated American benchmarks and realised that, almost subconsciously, I had developed my own.
Mine are, of course, deeply unscientific and highly personal - if not slightly eccentric - but they help.
The first is the width of our street.
When I first came to Baghdad just after Americans troops had marched in four years ago, we lived and worked in a normal street.
We walked around freely - even at night - taking just basic security precautions.
But this did not last long.
(Continued here.)
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