Highway to hell

RUWAISHED, Jordan - (click to enlarge photo)  We drove out to the Iraqi border yesterday - it's  roughly a 3 1/2 hour drive each way over a very rough, two-lane highway.  During the years of economic sanctions, this was a heavily traveled road, with hundreds of trucks a day ferrying goods to Iraq and bringing back oil. But since the U.S.-led "liberation,'' it's become the road to nowhere, or more aptly, the highway to hell.  Iraq now imports much of what it needs through Syria, Turkey and Iran, while most Jordanians are too frightened - rightfully so - to make the 400-mile trip from Amman to Baghdad. The last time I took this road was in April 2004, just a few days after four American contractors were murdered in Fallujah and their charred remains strung up on a bridge. The memory of that trip still causes chills.