An inadvertantly hilarious NYT article: “The American project to build a stable democracy in Iraq has encountered many obstacles. But perhaps the most elusive enemy is an old phantom called rumor.” The trouble is that the US civilian bureaucrats “hiding behind the 13-foot concrete blast walls surrounding [occupation] headquarters” don’t know what people are saying on the street.
The answer is “The Baghdad Mosquito, a daily intelligence document that chronicles the latest street talk in the Iraqi capital.” Problems mount, however: “against all odds, some of the street talk proves to be true.” Still, the Mosquito has its uses, e.g., it informed US authorities that, to their apparent shock, most people believe that “Iraqi police officers are corrupt and work contrary to the service of the citizens.” That revelation helped the “assistant commander of the First Armored Division, which is responsible for the security of Baghdad and central Iraq” to see that he needed to write “an Iraqi version of the Federalist Papers, an explanatory document to counter misunderstanding and apprehension.”
