http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/14247382.htmAttorney who helped revamp Iraq's judicial system wants to return
Every morning, Cliff Wardlaw wakes up to his personal war display. A wooden rack near his bed holds the desert-beige vest he wore in Iraq, his knives and flashlights still tucked inside the pockets. Draped over the vest are two large checked scarves Wardlaw wrapped around his face when the sharp desert sand flew like tiny bullets toward his skin. Seeing it there, in his St. Paul apartment, helps him relive his year in Iraq. And it is a reminder that he's ready to return if duty calls him again.
Wardlaw, an attorney, spent most of 2004 in Iraq after volunteering to help revamp the country's justice system. He trained judges, checked courthouse security, examined prison conditions and worked to steer the Iraqi judiciary to an independent body, one separate from the country's political leadership.
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Inside his office in the Minneapolis courthouse, where he works as a federal prosecutor, he e-mails his Iraqi friends regularly. Padding across the beige carpet of his apartment in the evenings, he wears his fleece jacket, embroidered with "U.S. Embassy, Baghdad, Iraq." Often, he carries a folding desert-camouflaged knife in a rear pocket, just as he did over there.
When he hears on the news about a car bombing in Iraq, he checks a framed map hanging in his apartment hall. Yep, he was there. Yep, he remembers that part of town.
His adult daughters roll their eyes. It's dangerous there. They think their 46-year-old dad is going through a mid-life crisis, and they wonder why he doesn't just buy a sports car.
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sigh
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