With the boys from Southern Pines in Northern Iraq
Sandro Contenta in the Toronto Star - U.S. forces call Iraqi retreat `amateur night at the Apollo':

After a day of spotting targets for warplanes, a team of U.S. commandos kicked back in the late afternoon sun, relaxing in T-shirts, beach flip-flops and wrap-around sunglasses.

The Canadian on the team, a 32-year-old born in Winnipeg, trimmed his goatee with an electric razor. He sat in the back of a pickup with an M60 machine-gun and anti-tank LAW bazooka by his side.

Just for laughs, his American commando buddies called him "the Québécois" ? a double tease in their eyes because it linked him to two countries, Canada and France, that don't support the U.S.-British war on Iraq.

"Everyone loves the French so much," said the Canadian, oozing sarcasm while refusing to give his name.
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Since last Thursday, Iraqi soldiers have made five strategic retreats, giving up large tracts of land to concentrate their forces close to Kirkuk, which has Iraq's most productive oil fields.
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The Iraqi soldiers, he said, are "total morons ... It's amateur night at the Apollo."

On Sunday, he said, he watched an air strike hit Iraqi soldiers in a bunker his team had spotted for the bombers. He watched as other Iraqi soldiers came to pick up what was left of their colleagues.

"I thought: `Man, don't you know a second one always comes after the first?'" he said, adding that, indeed, the next bomb wiped them out, too.
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Near the bridge, Razgar Ismail and his 13-year-old son, Raebin, had come to find the Kurdish village his family called home until the Iraqi army chased them out in 1987.

All that was left of the 50 or so mud brick houses of Chamsurkhow was a grassy field covering lumps of dirt.

"I can't even find the spot where my house use to be," said Ismail. "After the war, God willing, I will rebuild right here."

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