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Sometime this month, an Army captain in Iraq named Ryan Main will receive a small white box mailed from a shop just a few home runs from Coors Field.
When Main opens it, he'll find 25 premium cigars, fragrant with Dominican tobacco, hand-rolled and shipped by a total stranger.
The stranger's name is Clay Carl ton. Whatever his other claims to fame, one stands out: He's the only Coloradan holding both a barber's license and a federal cigar manufacturing license.
"We really don't know who we're sending these cigars to," Carlton said. "They generally just go to an Army Post Office address. But that's fine. We know the troops enjoy them. They've sent us letters from the field."
Carlton owns Palma Cigar Co., housed in a brick building at 2207 Larimer St. The one-man tobacco operation is in the front, his two-chair barber shop in back. . . .
There are few if any pleasures soldiering in Iraq, but Carlton is bringing a bit of comfort to the troops, one cigar at a time.
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Many Iraqis are also drawn to work in the Green Zone, manning shops that cater to the huge pool of contract laborers who eat rich dishes and hummus in the Freedom Cafe and buy whiskey and beer in the two liquor stores serving the area.
A 23-year-old Baghdad native, who asked that his name not be mentioned for fear for his life, manages one of the Green Zone's tobacco shops, which features five enormous hookahs and a floor-to-ceiling humidor full of Cuban cigars that can fetch $200 a box.
"I can get more money working here and it is worth it, despite the danger," the man, dressed in a tan track suit, said on a recent afternoon.
"I've been working here for a year. My wife and family knows, but I tell my friends I work in a grocery store in Karradah," he said, referring to a Baghdad neighborhood just across the Tigris River from the Green Zone.
With the $500 he makes a month, the man said he is able to support his wife and help his father and brother with food and rent. He works 11 hours a day for two weeks, sleeping in quarters behind the tobacco shop, then heads home outside the Green Zone for two days of rest.
Boris Johnson, Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, is accused of purloining invaluable "Iraqi cultural property" in 2003 - to whit, a cigar case owned by Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister.
Mr Johnson would have got away scot-free but, like all criminal masterminds, he made one vital mistake: he confessed his sin within days to hundreds of thousands of readers of this newspaper, admitting to taking the case for safe-keeping and pledging to return it on demand. . . .
In a way, this ridiculous investigation is a compliment, for it shows that Mr Johnson's enemies are running scared. Yes, his tough-on-crime credentials may be mildly bruised, but it is their reputation - and Scotland Yard's - that will suffer more.
Scotland Yard has been accused of wasting taxpayers' money by launching an investigation into the alleged theft by Boris Johnson of a cigar case from the home of Saddam Hussein's deputy prime minister five years ago.
* Read Boris Johnson on his decision to take the cigar case
* Mayor of London election 2008 in full
* Leader: Boris Johnson is a criminal mastermind
But as he prepared for a mission, Pendleton's image as a healthy, all-American graduate of West Point went up in smoke as he lit one cigarette after another.
It occurred to me that he could be the Marlboro man in another 10 years. Just put him in jeans, boots and a cowboy hat and plant him on top of a horse in the Rockies.
Cigarettes seem to calm the nerves here, and Pendleton's job has no shortage of stress. . . .
The violence has tapered off, but as Pendleton and a group of soldiers walked down that same boulevard last week you could see why he smokes so much.
A Marine reservist who killed an Iraqi soldier was sentenced Friday to a bad-conduct discharge but will serve no more time behind bars, a Camp Pendleton spokeswoman said.
Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes, 22, of Indianapolis, also was reduced in rank to private, said 1st Lt. Lisa Lawrence. . . .
Holmes' attorney, Steve Cook, claimed the Marine acted in self-defense after Hassin allegedly opened his cell phone and then lit a cigarette. Cook told jurors the men were not supposed to display any illuminated objects because of the threat of sniper fire, and Holmes tried repeatedly to get Hassin to extinguish the cigarette. . . .
Holmes told investigators that he fought with Hassin after knocking the cigarette from the soldier's hand.
A military jury sentenced Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes yesterday to time already served for stabbing an Iraqi soldier to death last year. . . .
Holmes stabbed and cut Pvt. Munther Jasem Muhammed Hassin more than 40 times during a predawn fight last New Year's Eve in an observation post in Fallujah. The confrontation began when the Iraqi soldier illuminated the post with a cell phone and then a cigarette.
Holmes apparently feared that insurgents would attack the post.
Prosecutors claim Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes murdered an Iraqi soldier while the two men stood guard together in Fallujah. But the 21-year-old Marine reservist says he acted in self-defense.
Now, jurors will determine whether he is innocent or guilty during a court-martial. The trial was to start Monday with jury selection. . . .
The killing occurred in the pre-dawn darkness after Hassin allegedly opened his cell phone, then lit a cigarette at the post, said Holmes' attorney, Steve Cook.
The men were not supposed to display illuminated objects because of the threat of sniper fire, and Holmes repeatedly tried to make Hassin extinguish the cigarette, Cook said.
Holmes maintains he knocked the cigarette out of the soldier's hand and the two got into a fight, falling to the ground.
Stan Pottinger, founder of http://www.CigarsStarsAndStripes.com, got the idea of sending cigars to the troops while talking on the telephone to his son, a Marine in Iraq. "I said, "What do you need?'" Pottinger says, "and he said, 'I could use a few cigars.' When I asked him why-he wasn't a big smoker-he said they were a good way to relax and good barter with civilian contractors for stuff they couldn't get at the PX. But the most unusual thing he said was they were a diplomatic ice- breakers with sheiks, local officials, and Iraqi soldiers.'"
Since then, Pottinger has spoken with servicemen and women who have had the same experience as his son. "Everyone considers cigars a unique moment of enjoyment in the midst of war," Pottinger says. "One guy said the smell of a cigar took him home quicker than photographs. For me, that alone was a reason to launch this Web site."
The Web site's biggest product is gift certificates.
Holmes was assigned to stand guard there with an Iraqi soldier he'd never met. Before the end of that night last December, the young Marine from Indianapolis says he found himself in a life-or-death struggle with the Iraqi soldier. The struggle ended with the Iraqi soldier stabbed to death and Holmes facing court-martial. Holmes said he worried the Iraqi's seemingly careless behavior -- smoking, using a cell phone -- on a dangerous post was putting him at risk. Military investigators came to a different conclusion, and Holmes was charged with unpremeditated murder and making a false statement. His trial, scheduled to begin Monday, is expected to take two weeks. The 22-year-old Holmes, who says he joined the Marines to help people, could be sentenced to life in prison if he's found guilty.
Authorities have increased the number of outposts to one every 400 yards in some zones along the 354-mile border, a Syrian officer said Saturday, stating each outpost was staffed with a half-dozen soldiers.
"There is no infiltration (into Iraq) here," the officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity with Syrian military regulations. However, several Iraqis have been caught smuggling ammunition and tobacco into Syria, he said.
Yet, in conversations at their frontline bases, members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, say they are determined to fight for their cause. They are motivated by long-held grievances and recently born suspicions -- not least over the health of their imprisoned founder, Abdullah Ocalan. They have stepped up attacks against Turkish soldiers in recent weeks, fearful that their leader is being poisoned, a charge Turkey denies. . . .
In this valley, deer abound. But the guerrillas do not hunt them, on grounds they must protect nature. Nor are they allowed to pick fruit from a tree unless it is completely ripe. They may drink milk and eat eggs, and some of the fighters admitted they have killed and eaten chickens. Now, Jehangir said, a campaign is underway to get fighters to quit smoking, deeming it unhealthy to nature and man.
-- Text of Ambassador Ryan Crocker's testimony to Congress on Monday, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions. . . .
In Anbar, as General Petraeus has noted, the progress on the security side has been extraordinary. Six months ago, violence was rampant, our forces were under daily attack and Iraqis were cowering from the intimidation of al-Qaida. But al-Qaida overplayed its hand in Anbar.
And Anbaris began to reject its successes, be they beheading school children or cutting off people's fingers as punishment for smoking.
Recognizing that the coalition would help reject al-Qaida, the tribes began to fight with us, not against us. The landscape in Anbar is dramatically different as a result.
It appears, then that a mere smoking ban wasn't all there was to the smoking ban that Thompson was talking about. It just wasn't as simple as the New York Daily News tried to make it seem with a tactic that made Thompson's point about the smoking ban seem trite and silly.
But, in truth, Thompson's point was 100% correct. Iraqis not only want their smokes, but having their fingers chopped off and their countrymen killed just for taking a puff or two was quite enough for them to join an effort to kill their tormentors.
What we have here, though, is just another attempt to destroy Thompson. Sadly, even Drudge fell for this Thompson slagging effort as he highlighted the NYDNews story on his well-visited site.
SIOUX CITY, Iowa - Freshly minted GOP White House hopeful Fred Thompson puzzled Iowans yesterday by insisting an Al Qaeda smoking ban was one reason freedom-loving Iraqis bolted to the U.S. side.
"They said, 'You gotta quit smoking,'" Thompson explained to a questioner asking about progress in Iraq during a town hall-style meeting.
Thompson said the smoking ban and terror tactics Al Qaeda used to oppress women and intimidate local leaders pushed tribes in western Anbar Province to support U.S. troops.
But Thompson's tale of a smokers' revolt baffled some in the audience of about 150 who came to decide whether the former Tennessee senator is ready for prime time.
"I don't know what that was about," said Jim Moran, 72, who had driven from nearby McCook Lake, S.D.