Bahro tahir is not the brightest soldier in Iraq's new army. Last week, at an American-assisted military academy in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's home town, he began basic training for the fourth time. It was not that he wanted to spend another month studying tedious human-rights law and drilling under a blistering sun; Mr Ta-hir did not want to do that at all. Rather, according to the academy's Iraqi instructors, Iraqi army commanders tend to send to basic training only those too friendless or dim to wriggle out of it, which included Mr Tahir. "They said they were sending me here for a computer course," he lamented, to the amusement of the recruits within ear-shot, except for another basic-training veteran, who turned out to be deaf.
展开▼
