Winning Iraqi Hearts and Minds – One Camel Rescue at a Time By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

I recently came across an interesting article by Michael Schmidt about American soldiers saving camels in Iraq. During the last days that the American troops were in Iraq, they spent their time "applying the gentler forms of military power". One group of American soldiers in the southern part of Iraq came across an Iraqi man trying to save his camel from the mud. 

"Sergeant Thomas, who was on his fifth deployment to Iraq since 2003, added: 'I felt that we won over the camel for the Americans. There is one less insurgent camel out there. It was the right thing to do. Camels are worth a whole lot of money, and the herdsman would have been in a whole world of hurt if he’d lost it'.”