Iraqi Stability Depends on U.S. Business
While U.S. presidents and secretaries of state fill their planes to Baghdad with aides and journalists, foreign leaders fill theirs with businessmen.
RAMADI Seventeen years ago the road from Abu Ghraib through Fallujah to Ramadi was among the most dangerous real estate in Iraq. On Feb. 12, 2004, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a convoy transporting John Abizaid, then-commander of U.S. Central Command, and Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, in Fallujah. Later that month, insurgents attacked three police stations simultaneously and freed close to one hundred prisoners. By March 2004, insurgents were cementing control over Fallujah. Attacks on U.S. and allied Iraqi forces became a near-daily occurrence both in the city, in nearby Habbaniyah, and in the provincial capital Ramadi. On March 31, 2004, insurgents ambushed a Blackwater convoy, set their bodies ablaze, dragged their corpses through the s