But we are making progress, wild west edition

Remember all those great westerns with outlaws going after stage coaches and trains? I don't think that's what the Bush administration had in mind when it decided to westernize Iraq but that's what they got.
Truckers say it's not safe out there. They contradict government's optimistic picture

Baghdad -- The last time Walid Mohammad Waij faced death on the highway, he yelled in its face.

Crammed with light bulbs, flower pots and other assorted made-in-China household goods, Waij's Volvo tractor-trailer was headed toward the Syrian border when armed bandits pulled up alongside and ordered him to stop. It was his third stick-up in as many months, and Waij decided he'd had enough.

"I yelled out the window at them," he recalls. "I told them, 'Even if you fire at my head, I am not going to stop.' "

Luckily, the bandits fell back in search of easier prey. But for Waij, that was it. "I'm getting out of the business," said the 47-year-old. "The roads are too dangerous. Anything is better than getting killed."

But Bush the Bush administration and their puppet Allawi continue to say that everything is rosy.

Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, during his visit to Washington last week, said that all but three of Iraq's 18 provinces are safe.

But Iraqi truckers who traverse the country's desolate highways tell a different story. Most of Iraq's countryside -- outside the three northern provinces under the control of Kurdish militias since 1991 -- has become a lawless no-man's land, they say, where criminals rob and kill with impunity.

Well, that's what you get when you take out the crooked sheriff with no plans to replace him.

Under Saddam Hussein, the biggest headache Iraqi truckers faced was corrupt police officers who collected bribes at checkpoints.

These days, there are different dangers and bands of criminals at virtually every turn.

But it's getting better, right?

Truckers say the situation is getting steadily worse, despite the more optimistic picture painted by Iraq's interim government.

"I don't envy the truckers," acknowledged Atta Nabeil, deputy transportation minister. "We admit there are big problems."