Baghdad Restaurants Won't Seat Police -Knight Ridder

[Rose Siding]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Most restaurants would be happy to have police officers as regular customers, grateful not only for the business but also for the presence of law and order.

Not in Baghdad. Not when Iraqi security forces are the target of insurgents' bombs. In many restaurants, Baghdad's finest are politely, albeit reluctantly, requested to walk out the door the minute they walk in.

"We ask the police not to come," said Yasser Emad, 39, the manager of his family's popular restaurant in the capital's middle-class Karrada district. "We hate to do this, but we want peace for the public and the restaurant."
....
"I don't enter a restaurant if there are police," said construction contractor Omar Ahmed, 25, as he dined recently in Baghdad. "I wish I could eat with them at the same table, but we cannot, because of the security situation."

Some diners quickly finish eating when police walk in, said Emad, the restaurant manager. Others ask before entering whether police are inside, explaining that they "do not want to dine with the Prophet Muhammad," a gallows-humor reference to the possibility of being blown to heaven mid-meal.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13586624.htm

[NanceGreggs]

1. Freedom is on the march ...

... just not anywhere in Iraq or its environs.

[JohnyCanuck]

2. Man, what do the doughnut shops do? n/t

[Erika]

3. Iraqis won't risk their lives to even eat with their own police?

And why are we there? Freedom is not appreciated unless it is won, these Iraqis have no interest in the fight, just the profits. Sounds like Bushbots.