Iraq: All Eyes On June 30: Inside The Occupation

With the June 30 handover nearing, the U.S. is scrambling to tame an insurgency and persuade Iraqis to back a new government. Here's how an American general and a U.N. diplomat hope to pull it off

General John Abizaid likes to travel on the edge. He is riding in a Black Hawk helicopter as it tears across the skies of central Iraq, skimming treetops and flushing startled sheep out onto the grassy pastures beneath. As always, the general's entourage of three choppers is shadowed by Apache helicopter gunships, hunting for the hunters--the insurgents who may lurk below and would like nothing better than to shoot down another symbol of the American occupation. This one would be a particular prize: as the head of the U.S. military's Central Command, Abizaid is the Pentagon's man in the Middle East,...

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