ONE CAMEL, NO PHONE BOOTHS (via Little Green Footballs):

Lucky Break for Jordan (Arnaud de Borchgrave, UPI, 3/21/2003)

U.S. air power ... kept a potential flood of Iraqi refugees away from the Jordanian border Friday....

U.S. fighter bombers took out the only gas station between Baghdad and the border, a distance of 600 kilometers. The one-camel village of Ramadi was also the only phone booth on the desert road and a Jordanian was killed by the explosion of the gas station while making a call to his parents in Amman to let them know he was on his way home.

Let's hope the camel wasn't hit too, otherwise MP Banks might get upset.

A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."

It's good to see Mr. Joseph wising up, but someone should introduce him to a neat new invention: the Internet. If he had read the BrothersJudd blog, he could have learned about the shredder without leaving home.

Jordanians see a good omen in the daily arrival of almost 1,000 white storks. They alight near the Safeway on one of Amman's seven hills, a pit stop on their way from Africa to their east European breeding grounds. About 100,000 storks are expected at the Safeway for the next month, numbers not seen in 10 years, and a sign of ample rain and a good harvest.

I see this as a good omen also. We betrayed the Iraqi people in 1991, calling for an insurrection and then letting Saddam slaughter those brave Iraqis who heeded our call. We are now making amends. Even the storks recognize that the Middle East is getting better this year. Posted by Paul Jaminet at March 21, 2003 5:51 PM