Brain Fertilizer

I've never linked one of Chrenkoff's pieces before...but why not start now?

I like the intro the best:

The problem is not that journalists can't get their facts straight: They can and usually do. Nor is it that the facts are obscure: Often, the most essential facts are also the most obvious ones. The problem is that journalists have a difficult time distinguishing significant facts--facts with consequences--from insignificant ones. That, in turn, comes from not thinking very hard about just which stories are most worth telling.

Other stories I like:

The back alleys and dense apartment buildings of Baghdad's Haifa Street once were all the protection that Saad Jameel needed after he lobbed grenades at Iraqi policemen or fired machine-gun rounds at American convoys.
He'd strike at will, dip into a warren of bullet-pocked storefronts and hide among neighbors he's known all his life. Confident and safe, Jameel sometimes chuckled as the troops he had just ambushed fired blindly at an attacker who was long gone.

One day last month, however, Jameel's name turned up on a most-wanted list broadcast on al-Iraqiya, Iraq's state-run television channel. He was amazed at how much the authorities knew about him: his leadership of an insurgent cell on Haifa Street, his involvement in a string of attacks on Iraqi security forces, even his aliases.

Jameel's safe zone crumbled as the U.S. and Iraqi forces he'd battled went on the offensive with patrols, mass arrests and a hotline for informants. He fled his neighborhood, his cell was paralyzed, and half his men were taken into custody.

For the first time, Jameel conceded in an interview earlier this week, insurgents along Baghdad's meanest street are feeling squeezed.

The Army and Marines have dramatically improved their ability to electronically jam remotely detonated roadside bombs.

The military is getting better intelligence on the insurgents. "We have had a lot more intelligence tips since the election," said Gen. John Abizaid, who commands all U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Abizaid also said the insurgents were able to field only an estimated 3,500 attackers during nationwide elections Jan. 30. Prior estimates had put the number of insurgents at roughly 20,000.

He is, even by Iraqi standards, an unlikely leader--a dentist from Manchester [England] whose only previous cause was supporting Liverpool FC [a soccer team]. Yet Abdallah Al Jibouri, 45, an exiled Iraqi who spent more than 20 years in Stockport, has turned his back on drilling and filling to become the reluctant saviour of one of the Sunni Triangle's most violence-prone troublespots. He had originally planned merely to check up on his elderly mother when he visited his home town of Muqtadiyah, 60 miles north of Baghdad, shortly after Saddam Hussein's fall. His Mancunian-accented English, however, ensured that he was pressed into service as unofficial negotiator between American troops and Iraqis, who elected him mayor.

Much to his astonishment--and, he says, to the dismay of his British wife, Sharon--he also became governor of the province of Diyala, whose population is 1.8 million.

Local insurgents have paid his leadership the ultimate backhanded compliment: they have tried to kill him 14 times, and have put a $10,000 bounty on his head. "I came for a visit two weeks after the liberation because I have got my mum and other family here," said Mr Al Jibouri. "I just wanted to make sure that they were all right. But I found the whole place was really a mess, with weapons everywhere, even little kids with machine guns.

"I began talking to the local sheiks and the US army and we hired some police. I thought I'd go home then but they said, 'No, you've got to stay and help us.' Of course it's dangerous, and the wife back in Manchester worries, but there are a lot of good people out here and they are worth it."

You'll have to actually visit the article to get the links for these stories.