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Reporter: Iraq checkpoints 'scary'

BAGHDAD, March 6 (UPI) -- An American press correspondent in Iraq has said that Army checkpoints are often confusing and scary.

Annia Ciezadlo, of the Christian Science Monitor, said she has often been driven past a couple of soldiers standing by the roadside -- and then found herself in the midst of screaming soldiers pointing rifles at her in what she did not realize was a checkpoint.

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Ciezadlo said that Iraqi drivers often follow their natural tendency to step on the gas because they think the soldiers are ordering them to leave, not to produce papers. The drivers have another reason to be lead foots, since under Saddam those who idled outside or drove slowly past his palaces or many other government buildings were automatically suspect.

In an editor's note, the Monitor said that Ciezadlo filed her story on checkpoints before U.S. soldiers wounded Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena and killed the Italian officer escorting her at a checkpoint in Baghdad.

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