IRAQI RESISTANCE

Bayarea:
Protests illustrate clash of cultures

BAGHDAD, Iraq - It was a minor incident, a small blip in the stream of events that are shaping the new, American-controlled Iraq.

But the confrontation that unfolded in central Baghdad on Sunday, pitting a few hundred former Iraqi army conscripts against U.S. military forces and the newly reconstituted Iraqi police, said much about the difficulties Americans face as occupiers of a country many of them barely understand.

By the time the morning-long standoff had ended and the protesters had drifted off, the American soldiers had succeeded in preventing any violence, but at the cost of something intangible yet vital to the longer-term success of the U.S. involvement in Iraq: good will.