Mike Tharp: Waiting to go into the field

BAGHDAD -- Random thoughts and feelings while in Iraq:

My Leadership Merced Class 24 "graduated" last night back home.

Wish I could have been with them.

When publisher Hank Vander Veen asked me last fall to join, I declined at first, saying the cost maybe could go for better use in our newsroom.

Man, am I glad he talked me into it.

Besides being the single best way to learn about Merced and Mercedians, from the one day each month we learned about ag, infrastructure, government, social services, law enforcement and dozens of other agencies and groups, the Forevermores, as we called ourselves, became my friends.

Usually in a group of 20 people, you find some you don't get on with. Not with the Forevermores. They're all good, fun, honorable folks from all walks of life. It's a program the Chamber of Commerce should be proud of.

Sorry to miss the ceremony, Forevermores, but I was there in spirit, even if my body was with the 1st Infantry Division on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Thanks for becoming my friends.

You never know about cops. My dad and next-younger brother were cops, but as a reporter and editor I've learned they're like most of us -- sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes in-between.

Last week, I encountered two Iraqi police officers. One aggressively stopped me from taking photographs of murals on blast walls outside the French embassy. Laith, our bureau reporter, and I had moved down the wall, me snapping away at the ancient Mesopotamian images painted there, designed to offer an aesthetic front to a grim reality.

After he issued his order, we stopped shooting and walked back to the car. As we were crossing the street, a young police officer held up Baghdad's notorious traffic for us.

I noticed his sunglasses--white and shaped like a jet pilot's. I stopped, pointed to them and said, "Cool! California!"

He may have understood the second word. In any case, he took them off and handed them to me.

"You!" he said. "You."

I shook my head. He still held them out to me. I took them.

So whenever I'm on a chopper or fixed wing in Iraq, which require serious eye protection, thanks to a young cop I'll have the most fashionable protective wear on the aircraft.

Went to a grocery store the other day -- another first during two tours of Iraq. Found Ritz crackers and searched high and low for peanut butter. No go. Didn't stock it. So I bought a jar of Nutella, which Laith assured me was similar. It is -- if you like chocolate fudge on your crackers. So that's been my supper a few nights, along with canned cheese.

Dr. Gallery, if you're reading this, I am losing weight.

The horrific bombing Wednesday night in Sadr City, a teeming Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad, killed at least 70 and wounded 135 or more.

The bomb was concealed under a pile of vegetables in a three-wheeled motorcycle, the only gasoline-propelled vehicles small enough to fit through the blast walls and safety barricades built in that former militia stronghold.

Their use as killing machines led two eyewitnesses interviewed by our reporter, Sahar, to conclude that it was an inside job.

These witnesses concluded that the Iraqi police know nearly everybody in their zones of operation and would've recognized a stranger.

If true, and a resident or residents were responsible for the lethal destruction, it means the perps did it for money. That's just what a crowd of young men who threw bricks at officers chanted as the bodies were being removed.