Reporters on the Job

• Kurdistan is Bush Country: Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in major cities worldwide protested this past weekend against the war in Iraq, and most Iraqis are either ambivalent or angry toward the US president, but Sulaymaniyah in Iraq's Kurdish north could be more solidly for George Bush than Crawford, Texas.

In staff writer Dan Murphy's unscientific sampling of opinions among a dozen Kurdish merrymakers on their major annual holiday (page 7), every single respondent expressed love and thanks to America and Mr. Bush specifically. Most compared either Bush or the Coalition Provisional Authority to Kawa, the heroic Kurdish blacksmith whose defeat of an evil king is commemorated on March 21. One young lady at an amusement park said: "I'm praying for Bush to win the election. If I could, I'd fly to America and vote for him."

David Clark Scott
World editor

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