Mike Creswell works for the Southern Baptist News Service. In November he visited Iraq and looked at some of the projects the Southern Baptists are involved with.
Approaching Baghdad, the twin-prop, 19-seat plane does not circle. It does not descend slowly. Instead, the plane does a hard right turn, goes just about sideways and sort of falls out of the air, levelling off at the last minute to land some seconds ahead of your stomach. Fortunately the pilot tells you before it happens that it's going to happen, but still . . .
The landing method is to reduce the chances of getting fired on, of course. It seems people always want to know what kind of reception we Americans had from average Iraqi people during a week in Baghdad. And the answer is: kind, warm, polite for the most part. If there were threats, dirty looks or bad intentions, we were not aware of them. And believe me, I was looking around all the time!
