U.S. Engineer Views Work Done So Far With Pride

BAGHDAD -- Speeding off to another rebuilding project, Maj. John Hudson of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wheeled out of the driveway of one of his many prides and joys: the headquarters of Iraq's new broadcast regulatory body, a sunlit building with an open floor plan, overlooking the Tigris River.

As Hudson's convoy popped onto the street, an Iraqi driver nearby -- trained to stop dead at the sight of any one U.S. Humvee or two or more sport-utility vehicles -- slammed on his brakes. The Iraqi sat stoically as a car rear-ended his, the crunch of metal audible through the bulletproof windows of Hudson's SUV.

Hudson kept talking about his projects, without spilling a drop from his travel cup of Starbucks coffee, sent from home.

"A lot of the high-end finish materials still have to be imported," Hudson said, referring to the seamlessly laid marble tiles in the new offices of the National Communication and Media Commission. The marble for the $5.2 million offices came from Italy, Hudson presumed.

"Craftsmanship," said Hudson, a blue-eyed 35-year-old from Colorado Springs. "A lot of pride and workmanship in that project."

Later, at an Army Corps of Engineers office in the Green Zone -- the fortified site of much of the Iraqi government -- Hudson, in flak jacket and helmet, spread his hands lovingly on a map of Baghdad. "Two youth centers. Two fire stations -- those are in some of your poorer neighborhoods. Baghdad highway patrol. A facility for the SWAT team. A new perimeter wall for Doura," a power plant in Baghdad's insurgency-ridden south. A checkpoint on a southern road into the city. An electrical substation.

Hudson picked out the sites instantly, his finger stopping on each one. The projects are among 90 under his domain and among 3,600 projects in an $18.4 billion reconstruction package for Iraq due to peak, and be completed, this year.

British private security contractors escorted Hudson on his trip. A siren signaled the coming of the convoy, sending some pedestrians scrambling even as others stubbornly slowed. One vehicle ran interference, guarding against suicide bombers that prowl Baghdad in search of Western convoys. Hudson has had the good fortune never to come close to a bombing, he said, never to hear more than a few gunshots on his visits once or twice a week to work sites.

The broadcast agency headquarters, with a wall of windows opening up to a Tigris River glittering in the morning sun, is easily one of the most beautiful buildings in Baghdad.

"The people working here seem kind of excited about moving in," Hudson noted.

Next stop, a children's hospital. On one side, in the wing not yet touched by the U.S. money and American and Iraqi engineers, mothers in black shrouds and fathers in black leather jackets cradled infants as they stood in the cold to press into a chaotic admitting office. In the dark inside the wing, children lay in arms or on floors, or milled, wailing, in a waiting room.

"Last time I was here they had them in there two at a time," Hudson said, surveying incubators pushed up against a dirty wall, tiny, thin babies lying mute inside. In limited English, Taref Fawdhil, a physician, conceded that some infants here had died from diarrhea and septicemia.