{"id":179,"date":"2007-10-14T22:09:56","date_gmt":"2007-10-14T22:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"\/2007\/10\/14\/defending-the-railroads\/"},"modified":"2013-04-24T18:45:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T18:45:56","slug":"defending-the-railroads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/defending-the-railroads\/","title":{"rendered":"Defending the railroads"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Daily Telegraph of October 12 2007 has an article by Damien McElroy entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml;jsessionid=QZMINLJ5WGMA1QFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=\/news\/2007\/10\/12\/nosplit\/wanbar112.xml\">&#8220;Iraq insurgency: Defending the railroads&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>McElroy reports from al-Qaim,saying<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nThe unending suspension of Iraq&#8217;s national railway stands as a stark symbol of the failure to rebuild the nation. <\/p>\n<p>Getting the network operating is not one of Washington&#8217;s 18 benchmarks for progress in Iraq but the resumption of scheduled services along thousands of miles of track would mark a momentous breakthrough four years after the war to depose Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Two Iraq Republic Railway inspectors at the remote desert railhead in al-Qaim have defied terrorist threats and criminal gangs to loyally keep the railway open on limited local runs. <\/p>\n<p>Freight trains carrying supplies for a phosphorous plant are the only service offered at al-Qaim, which is also the main American base.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There are also some good photos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Daily Telegraph of October 12 2007 has an article by Damien McElroy entitled &#8220;Iraq insurgency: Defending the railroads&#8221;. McElroy reports from al-Qaim,saying The unending suspension of Iraq&#8217;s national railway stands as a stark symbol of the failure to rebuild the nation. Getting the network operating is not one of Washington&#8217;s 18 benchmarks for progress [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12,38,66],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2688,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/2688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/iraq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}