IRAQ THE MODEL

Some news:

- over 500 Iraqi officers departed to Jordan yesterday to get a training course there to get certificates to be the commanders of the units of the new Iraqi army, this course is supposed to last for 11 weeks, most of those officers were junior officers in the former Iraqi army, others were from the Kurdish militia.
Some of those men showed their disagreement with their training plan as the Jordanian army (and most of the other Arab armies) is considered to be inferior to the Iraqi one and its officers are not qualified to be teachers for Iraqi officers.

- the minister of foreign affairs stated that SH confessed during the on going investigations that he used to offer large sums of money to some Arabic media officials and political personalities in the past years to encourage them to assist him on his propaganda program and to give a good impression to the Arab world about his regime.
The Iraqi minister said that these names will be declared later in the Iraqi journals with the amounts of money paid by SH to those people. (I think that Al-Jazeera should be waiting for the good news now!!).

- There has been a considerable decrease in the length of the lines near the gas stations in Baghdad, even the black market price for gasoline has declined from 500 ID/liter last week to 200 ID/liter today.

- The UAE offered to the GC to take the responsibility of preparing the (new civil identity card system) that will assist in the completion of the new constitution construction procedure and the coming elections.

- By the way, this is a photo we took in Basra. It shows a copy statue for the famous (lion of Babylon) in one of the main squares of Basra, near Al-Kornish. The words written on the base of the statue say:
"SATAN IS BETTER THAN SADDAM"
"DOWN WITH (ABU AL-THALIJ) EZZAT THE MONKEY"
"MAY GOD NEVER SHOW MERCY TO THE BA'ATHISTS"