posted April 22, 2003 at 7:18 a.m. MDTThat's the stuff!
One town's test of Iraqi democracy [csmonitor.com] - "How the 'founding fathers' of Umm Qasr went from tyranny to town council in days."
"Shortly after US and British forces pushed through this dusty port town in southern Iraq at the start of the coalition invasion, a school administrator got a crazy idea.
It was the kind of inspired thought that might have gotten him jailed, beaten, even killed a few days earlier. But now, Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party operatives were on the run, and in Umm Qasr, Najim Abed Mahdi could suddenly think the unthinkable. He and a handful of other Iraqis banded together to form their own town council."
