Teen tourist sees Baghdad--and lives!

And you wonder why I call them Roto-Reuters? It is hard to believe they make a living with headlines like that.

An American teenager ran away to Baghdad over Christmas and survived probably the most dangerous destination in the world before being packed off home by the U.S. military, U.S. officials said on Friday.

Farris Hassan, the 16-year-old son of Iraqi immigrants to Florida, showed up at the Baghdad bureau of an American news agency on Tuesday and recounted a tale of foolhardy daring by a would-be journalist on a far-fetched school project, the Associated Press said in a report on its unlikely visitor.

Unable to speak Arabic, the dangers of his predicament began to dawn on him when he went out of his hotel looking for food and had to pull out his phrase book.

"And I'm like, 'Well, I should probably be going.' It was not a safe place. The way they were looking at me kind of freaked me out," he told the AP.
A U.S. military spokesman said troops, who suffer daily casualties in the Iraqi capital, took Hassan into their care.

The U.S. consul in Baghdad Richard Hermann, taking care not to name him in public, said he was on his way home for New Year.

"The young American citizen who has been in Iraq the past few days has now safely departed Baghdad and this young American is now on his way back home to his family in the United States."

Hassan's mother, Shatha Atiya, told CBS television: "We are going to watch his every move. We are going to take his passport. We're going to limit his access to money."

Uh, yeah...that'll teach him. I guess.

The account of his journey included a flight to Kuwait, failure to cross the Iraqi border because of a security closure for the December 15 election, a call to his father, a trip to Beirut to stay with family friends and, finally, a Christmas flight to Baghdad and a ride into town arranged by those acquaintances.