Alex Manikas, 63, a sheet metal worker from Michigan, goes to the Baghdad Country Club to unwind every Saturday night after working his six-day a week, 12 hour a day job building the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on April 14, 2007.
Saturday night in Baghdad, and Heidi, the barmaid at the Baghdad Country Club, is worried about the beer. On a busy night, she might serve 800 cold ones to the diplomats, security guards and construction workers who frequent the Country Club, a white cinder-block house with blue trim on a residential street in the Green Zone. The BCC, as it's known, gets its alcohol from suppliers outside the walls, but insurgents are targeting the crossings on either side of the Tigris River. On this Saturday, a truck bomb on a bridge has locked up traffic on the west bank of the...
