U.S. payments aimed at Iraqis' losses

Every other Wednesday and Thursday, a long line of the bereft and the aggrieved forms on the dusty roadway outside the fortified U.S. military compound here.


Iraqi men and women, and occasionally children, wait in blinding sunshine or dreary rainfall to present damage claims to the U.S. military.


A widow says her husband was killed during an American combat operation. A father reports his young son lost an arm in American gunfire. A farmer's cows were killed, a house was damaged, a car was wrecked, windows were broken.


A complainant with enough perseverance might wait several hours to be searched and then escorted inside the barbed wire and blast walls to speak to a military legal officer. In more than half the cases nationwide, legal officers say, a cash payment is made--up to $2,500 for a death, $1,500 for an injury and $500 for property damage.

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