A GOOD Appointment in Samarra!

News is coming in that our seven POWs have been rescued by Special Forces! Iraqis tipped off our guys along the road to Tikrit that they were being held in Samarra, having been hauled there from Baghdad. Since this ancient market town is perhaps best known in the West for that angel of death story, this is an incredibly wonderful piece of irony!

(If you don't know the story: once there was a Baghdad man who was walking down the street and met the angel of death. He thought he was going to die, but the angel just looked surprised. "My appointment with you isn't for a week." So the man decided he had a week to get away from Death, and ran off to Samarra. He had just begun to count himself safe when he ran into the angel of death again. "Ah, there you are," said the angel. "I wondered why my appointment with you was in Samarra!")