The Philadelphia Inquirer has a nice story on what is going on in Kirkuk, Iraq. "When they realized that the newly trained local police force desperately needed walkie-talkies, the U.S. troops who patrol Iraq’s fourth-largest city didn’t wait for civilian bureaucrats to buy them, as have their Baghdad counterparts.

The soldiers in Kirkuk found a dealer and ordered the radios with their emergency funds. They did the same with weapons, vehicles and office furniture."