Tragic Mixup in Orders

Early reports from Iraq are indicating that a team of USAID staff has been surrounded by Saddam's elite Republican Guard. The USAID team, identified as a "SWAT" unit from Washington DC, was holed up in the small Shiite village of Al' Shuwear approximately 100 km. west of Baghdad. Unnamed sources in Kuwait told reporters that the US Military Command in Qatar was convinced that an unfortunate mixup in orders has created the crisis. Orders to a National Guard unit in Oklahoma to mobilize a rapid-response SWAT team had mistakenly been routed to a grant-writing unit at USAID HQ in DC. Dispatches from a Kurdish underground unit near Al' Shuwear indicated that the USAID bureaucrats had surprised the villagers early Monday when they swooped in and announced to befuddled village leadership that they were from the U.S. Government and were "there to help them."

More when news becomes available.