http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/oneworld/20030815/wl_oneworld/4536661091060976965&cid=655&ncid=1473The Making of an Iraqi Guerrilla: One Man's Tale
BAGHDAD One night at the end of June, a young Iraqi man goes out to ambush an American convoy near the central Iraqi town of Fallujah.
He is wearing his favorite blue tracksuit. He is a small guy, solid and compact, with cropped dark hair and a chin that juts out slightly. He likes tough sports, especially handball. He can stub out a cigarette on the calluses of his left palm. It will be his first time in combat.
Although he has trained only fleetingly for what he is about to do, he is not afraid. "If I die for a reason, that's a nice thing," he says later. snip
The man's motivations for attacking the convoy are simple: to resist the American "insult to Iraqi and Arab tradition."
His remarks, during a two-hour interview at a Baghdad hotel, convey a sense of betrayal and trampled dignity. "They might have helped, but they destroyed things," he says of the Americans in Iraq. "They provoked." snip
But the man in the blue tracksuit is no Baathist; he complains about the old regime's corruption and other failings. He cites his two years as an Army conscript. For enlisted men, he says, military service was like living in a jungle full of lions - the rapacious, bribe-soliciting senior officers. His career as a handball player stalled because he wouldn't or couldn't pay a bribe to get on the national team.
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