There is no analog, in the Arab culture, to the waltz. At least I couldn't find one in the 150 seconds I gave Google to locate web sites containing the phrase "traditional Arab dance."

So, the title was going to become "Anniversary Belly Dance" but, in the end, I didn't like it so I switched it back to Anniversary Waltz which has no specific meaning, but there you are.

Dear Mr. Mullings:
If it takes that long to explain a line, the line is no good.
Signed,
The Milton Berle School of Stand-Up Comedy and Diesel Repair
[Close Cover Before Striking]

As I am writing this we are marking the anniversary of the beginning of this particular Gulf War. Dan Rather has been here. Peter Jennings has been here. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard and Fox TV was here:

Tom Squitieri of USA Today was here:

Secretary of State Colin Powell just walked passed my office so he IS here.

SIDEBAR:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has visited twice since I got here. Each time the military folks have gotten their Drawers, Men's, Cotton, (one each) into a massive twist making certain that everything was lined up, washed down, and looked over.

While this was going on, the State Department types yawned noisily, rolled their eyes at the foolishness of it all, waved their hands in the air (as State Department people tend to do) and went out of their way to make certain that everyone in uniform knew how deeply they were ignoring the SecDef's visit.

Now that the Secretary of State is here, the Staties have been running around with their hair on fire for three days, making absolutely certain that every one of the 3,417 people on the trip has a "control officer" to mind them, walking the routes to see exactly where they will have the best chance of intercepting the Secretary on his travels through the Palace, and generally engaging - not in projectile sweating, because diplomats don't sweat - but in projectile misting.

The military types, for their part, are showing their extreme indifference to the whole thing by saluting each other smartly and speaking only in acronyms while, with great intensity, nonchalantly cleaning their weapons.

END SIDEBAR:

Another person who showed up was Miss New York. Knowing such an opportunity might never come again, she begged for a photo with Ranger Rick and Ranger Rick, being well-schooled in the courtly graces, obliged.

Note, please the body language of Miss NY: She is obviously trying to get as close to Ranger Rick as possible without being arrested for assault. Although you can't see it in this photo, she actually whispered in my ear. I believe her tender words were something on the order of: "Your hand? On my waist? Move it or lose it, mister."

Oh, those New York girls. What a sense of humor.

The cast on my left hand will be off by next weekend.

Latest.

On the anniversary of the war thing, we had many, many discussions as to whether the anniversary of the start of the war - March 19th or 20th depending upon your time zone - would be the date to be marked or whether the day the Saddam statue was pulled down by a tank retriever - April 9th - should be the date.

I had this discussion a hundred times:

What was the date of Pearl Harbor? What was the date of D-Day?

Everyone knew. Everyone remembers when wars started. Then I would ask:

What was the date of V-E or V-J day?

One person knew. Very few knew the months. Most people had to guess at the year.

We are programmed to remember the beginnings, not the endings. I don't know why this is.

The answers, by the way, are May 8 and August 15, 1945 respectively. Don't even ring a bell, do they?

In the end the media, as noted above, drove the story.

Notwithstanding the danger which exists here, there are real signs of progress.

A couple of weeks ago I did Tony Snow's Saturday program on the Fox Cable Network. I was on at about noon Eastern time which is 8 pm here in Baghdad. In order to be on Fox I have to go to their studio at the Sheraton Hotel here. The Sheraton Hotel is not in the Green Zone.

It is in the Red Zone.

Traveling outside the Green Zone in the daytime is considered risky. Going about at night is downright foolhardy.

In the olden days - February - we could zip-dash-race from the Green Zone to the Sheraton in about seven minutes because there was no other traffic. There were no people out at night, so there were no shops open to cater to them.

However, this last time we got caught in an actual traffic jam.

This was the conversation between me and the security detail leader:

Me: What the hell's with all this traffic?
Security Guy: Dunno.

When one is traveling in an unarmored SUV at night in Baghdad, one's attention is likely to be focused - properly - outside the vehicle, so one tends to be succinct, if not terse, in one's speech.

There is a blizzard of polling data to indicate that the locals are pretty happy with the way things are going. A recent poll commissioned by ABC News and the BBC by Oxford Research International asked, as the first question, "Overall, how would you say things are going in your life these days - very good, quite good, quite bad, or very bad?"

71 percent said Very or Quite good
29 percent said Quite or Very bad

And when Iraqis were asked, "What is your expectation for how things overall in your life will be in a year from now?"

82 percent said Much or Somewhat better (an additional 11 percent said about the same)
Only 8 percent said they expected their lives to be somewhat or much worse.

It was not recorded whether Saddam Hussein was one of those who was polled. He has, doubtless, a more negative view of what his life will be like a year from now.

Another indicator of forward momentum is the percentage of households in the major metropolitan are which have at least one person working.

Last November, when I first arrived here, one household in five had no wage earner. By late February that had dropped to under three percent. That's not an unemployment figure. It is, however a strong indicator of an economy which is one its way to becoming self-sustaining.

It also helps explain the fact that people are on the streets - day and night - shopping, visiting, going to restaurants, and generally doing the kinds of things people do in a country on the upswing.

The LA Times did a series on the one-year anniversary which was published yesterday. This is one of the first grafs:

Saddam Hussein is gone

The hated Mukhabarat secret police no longer control the country with their vast bureaucracy of oppression.

Newspapers and prayer leaders shout a variety of opinions.

People buy satellite TV dishes, imported used cars and home appliances with abandon.

Shiite Muslims practice their religion without fear of the state.

No one is compelled to mouth paeans to the leader.

Freedoms previously undreamed of are taken for granted.

To be fair, the next paragraph reads:

Yet few are happy. The freedom feels like anarchy and abandonment. Instead of being oppressed by a tyrant, people are oppressed by a welter of criminals, insurgents, petty bullies and encroaching theocrats.

Dear Mr. Mullings:
We may have forgotten to tell you, but we don't read these Travelogues for their news value. We read them for � for � well, to tell you the truth we don't know WHY we read them. At any rate we don't care about poll numbers and newspaper stories. We want the real stuff.
Signed,
The National Association of People who Only Read Headlines, Sunday Paper Thumbnail Book and Movie Reviews, and the Covers of Supermarket Tabloids then Bore the Crap Out of Their Colleagues by Pretending to be In-the-Know.

Ok. How about this as a sign - literally - of progress.

The people who do such things have placed "Keep Off the Grass" signs all over the Palace grounds.

A couple of points about this:

1. This is largely a desert and there is very, very little flora of any description. The notion that, having gone through the winter - which is the growing season - without any noticeable greening of the Green Zone, but that we will have grass enough to graze when the temps hit 130 degrees is, by any measure, an optimistic outlook.

Get me the people from Oxford Research on the phone right away.

2. This is an honest-to-Allah photo of the guys mowing the grass off of which we have been ordered to stay:

Mowing the lawn in Baghdad is best accomplished with a broom.

There is no good way to ease into this next one, so here you are.

This is a photo from the other night of pals Susan and Mike with Ranger Rick in yet another Marietta College sweatshirt.

The amusing thing about this photo - as pointed out to me by Susan is this: Her name is Susan Phalen. His name is Mike Whalen. My name is Rich Galen.

This photo marks the first meeting of the National Association of People, in a War Zone, Whose Names Rhyme.

WE thought it was very funny.

This week, marking the anniversary of the start of the war, was marked - as too many weeks here are - with sadness.

On Saturday there was a memorial service for the two American civilian employees who were murdered outside of Hillah - about an hour's drive south of Baghdad. They were two people who were here to help.

One, Fern Holland, was a young lawyer who was here to start programs for women. I taught a class in democracy to about 80 woman in January. It was Fern's program. She saw a need and came to help fill it.

The other was Bob Zangas who was in Iraq as a civilian employee of the Department of Defense having previously been here for nine months on active duty as a Marine Reserve Lieutenant Colonel. We talked by phone, maybe once a week. He, too, saw a need and helped fill it.

Later in the day, there was a ceremony to dedicate the Psychological Operations Battalion compound here in the Green Zone to the memory of Lt. Col. Chad Buehring. Chad was the only person killed in the attack on the Al Rasheed hotel last October. He died a week before I got here.

This is the legend on the plaque:

"In the early morning hours of 26 October 2003, the first of two salvo rocket attacks struck the Al Rasheed Hotel where he was living. After moving two soldiers to safety, he returned to engage the enemy. It was then that the second salvo of rockets penetrated the building, fatally wounding LTC Buerhing."

The bad guys, also wanting to mark the anniversary, blew up a hotel in downtown Baghdad. It was not immediately clear what the hotel had done to anger the bad guys, but they put about 1,000 lbs of explosives into a car, had some poor schmuck drive the car down the street and then blew it, him, and seven innocent people to smithereens.

There is a very small part of that story which I want to share with you:

Many organizations here have what are called PSDs - Personal Security Details. These are private companies who are hired to provide bodyguards to various and sundry civilian employees.

One of the guys who manages a PSD unit is named Russ Preston. Russ and his team do not live in the Green Zone, they live in Baghdad proper. As it happens they live near the hotel which was blown up the other night.

When the bomb went off, Russ ran into the building to help pull out victims. This is a photo of that activity captured by Amman Awad for Reuters:

Personal Security Detail guys get paid well. But I guarantee you, Russ ain't paid to do this.

Fern. Bob. Chad. Russ.

Civilian. Reserve. Active Duty. Retired. They each rushed into danger to help, in their own way, people they didn't even know.

I remain in awe of people such as these.

Be safe.

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