KIRKUK REGIONAL AIR BASE, Iraq (AP) - Lt. Col. Mark Bennett never imagined he would fly a propeller plane over northern Iraq with a former member of Saddam Hussein's air force at his side. Four years ago, Bennett screeched across Iraqi airspace in a B-1 bomber, dropping 2,000-pound bombs on runways and hangars at an Iraqi air base below. Now, he is back to rebuild the same Iraqi air force he helped disable during the 2003 U.S. invasion.Bennett is one of more than 80 Americans training Iraqi pilots at a flight school inaugurated this week at this U.S. military base set up on the ruins of a Saddam Hussein-era air base. The goal is to restore the Iraqi air force - once the sixth-largest in the world - to at least part of its former glory.
The landscape here still bears the scars of U.S. bombing runs in 2003 - craters in the runways and hangars roofs ripped open to the sky. Old Iraqi jet fighters decay in a gravel lot, near berms where Saddam's henchmen tried to bury them to elude U.S. detection in 2003.