The Iraqi soldier at the last checkpoint before the Jordanian border stared at my passport incredulously. He couldn't write "American" in the log. There hadn't been an American at this checkpoint in years.
"Are you Iraqi?" he asked.
"No," I answered.
"What are you?" he asked, confused.
"I'm American," I answered, and when that still wasn't enough I added, "I'm Lebanese also."
He wrote down "Lebanese."
A few months ago, no American would have been foolish enough to do what I had just done: drive from Baghdad west through Iraq's Anbar province, long the hotbed of the country's Sunni Muslim insurgency, and into Jordan. The route was notorious for hijackings, kidnappings and roadside bombs, and passed some of the best-known symbols of the country's mayhem: Abu Ghraib, Hamdaniyah, Fallujah, Ramadi and beyond.
But western Iraq has changed, and the drive last Sunday was proof of that.
Not once in the seven hours that it took to travel the 360 miles or so was there a threatening moment. The concrete barriers that used to block traffic along the road at al Haswa and then later at al Rutba — so insurgents and bandits could assault cars more easily — had been shoved into the median. Traffic flowed quickly and smoothly ...
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