] BEIRUT (Reuters) - Salaam went to Iraq to do battle with ] Americans and die a martyr. He returned home with ] shrapnel wounds and tales of fighting U.S. military might ] with a rifle. ] ] From a Baghdad hotel he moved to a training camp where ] volunteers practiced shooting and trench warfare. Then ] Salaam, 24 years old and unemployed, was sent to war. ] ] "I was sleeping behind mounds of sand and firing from ] Kalashnikovs on helicopters. It was craziness," he said. ] ] "We stayed at the front five days and we didn't eat ] anything. I saw two dead bodies shot in the head." ] ] Thousands of volunteers from across the Arab world are ] thought to be in Iraq to fight advancing U.S. and British ] forces. On Wednesday, jubilant Iraqis welcomed U.S. ] troops in Baghdad. ] ] Salaam, a Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim, said he was unprepared ] for the hostility of some Iraqis to volunteers like ] himself. ] ] "I went there to be a martyr, not to be murdered by a ] brother," he told Reuters. "We went there to help them ] liberate their country, and all they did was shoot us in ] the back." ] ] "I am not afraid of the Americans. On the contrary I want ] to fight them. But I was scared of the Iraqis, ] specifically those who call themselves the Iraqi ] opposition," he said. I love how he says he went to Iraq for jihad and then later he says he's not normally religious. |