Mortar Disrupts U.S. Ceremony in Iraq

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/22/ap/world/mainD8E1H94O0.shtml

(AP) Insurgents fired a mortar at a U.S. ceremony attended by top officials on Tuesday to hand over a presidential palace in Saddam Hussein's hometown to local Iraqi authorities, sending the U.S. ambassador and top commander scrambling for cover but causing no injuries.

As a U.S. colonel was giving a speech, the mortar whistled as it fell into a field about 300 yards away from the palace in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. The mortar failed to explode when it hit the ground.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad and the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, briefly went inside the palace, but emerged a few minutes later to continue the ceremony.

Later, Hamad Hamoud Shagtti, the Salahuddin provincial governor, received a symbolic key to the palace and a deputy governor raised the Iraqi flag over the complex.

said the captain of the Titanic...

They might also notify Biden, Kerry, and the other "staged withdrawal" polticians that the time to get out of Iraq is now.