Dirty work

Franz Froelicher, a chemist and geologist with the Army Corps of Engineers, went to Iraq last spring with a $22,000 portable laboratory and elaborate plans to establish an environmental monitoring program following the defeat of Saddam Hussein. Like the Bush administration's plans for post-war Iraq, however, Froelicher's plans didn't turn out quite the way he had expected. Instead, the chemistry lab stayed crated and Froelicher went to work solving a more immediate problem for the occupation authorities-removing the hulks of about 10,000 burned-out military vehicles abandoned by Iraqi defense forces, and tons of rotting garbage clogging the streets of Baghdad.