IRAQ

LA Times: Occupation's Ordeals Ravage Iraqi Psyche
BAGHDAD -- Iraqis think of it as the social security office. And as the court of civil complaints and the central police station. It also goes by the generic name "the Authority." A single American soldier was on duty at its side gate, sitting on a chair behind spools of barbed wire.

Ikbal Abbas Muhsen, a onetime employee of the Youth Ministry, called out to the soldier. "I need to talk to the general!" she said in Arabic. She had come to ask for her job back from the people now ruling Iraq: the U.S. officials installed at Saddam Hussein's old Republican Palace.

Muhsen had dressed in a black jacket for the occasion. The soldier, sitting a dozen feet away, seemed unaware of her presence.