Level -> A positive shift, or playing with fire? (6/9/2007 7:09:47 AM)
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I'm not sure how this is going to end up: BAGHDAD, June 8 - The worst month of Lt. Col. Dale Kuehl's deployment in western Baghdad was finally drawing to a close. The insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq had unleashed bombings that killed 14 of his soldiers in May, a shocking escalation of violence for a battalion that had lost three soldiers in the previous six months while patrolling the Sunni enclave of Amiriyah. On top of that, the 41-year-old battalion commander was doubled up with a stomach flu when, late on May 29, he received a cellphone call that would change everything. "We're going after al-Qaeda," a leading local imam said, Kuehl recalled. "What we want you to do is stay out of the way." "Sheik, I can't do that. I can't just leave Amiriyah and let you go at it." "Well, we're going to go." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19103676
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