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'Iron Mike'

Muqtada al-Sadr, the notorious radical cleric, is making trouble just across town. Worse, a car bomb exploded minutes earlier, killing more than a dozen Iraqis and injuring 50 more. And a blinding sandstorm is only an hour away from blowing in and shutting the whole place down.

Yet Lt. Col. Michael Hilliard, U.S. Army by way of Fort Hood, Texas, sits placidly on a couch in the grimy headquarters of the provincial government here. He may be churning on the inside, but he sips tea as if he had nothing else in the world to do on this, Day 1,113 of the war in Iraq.

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Posted by Chris McNary  at 11:02 PM (E-mail this entry)