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Baghdad Real Estate

10 bedrooms, furnished, with air conditioning, showers and Western toilets. With a rooftop that offers 360 views for a security detail and high walls. That's what Captain MacFarlane and Sergeant Anslinger are looking for in a temporary home for their Recon platoon.

And here in the Beverly Hills of Bagdhad, the exclusive area not far from the Presidential palaces, there are plenty of places that fill this description. The area is so exclusive that it's been out of bounds to ordinary Bagdadis.

But it's the playground for the recon or "Scout" platoon of the 4/64 armored regiment. These young men are high spirited mavericks. They have to be. Their extremely dangerous job has been to do reconnaissance for the tanks of Task Force Tusker, the fast moving armored force that was the first to run the gauntlet up Route 8 into Baghdad less than a week ago.

Racing around Bagdhad in armored humvees that bristle with weaponry, they provide security for the battalion in its base here in the Presidential palace and continuously patrol the whole area around the Palace complex. They've taken fire again and again. And only the night before last, Scout platoon's Sgt Hobbs took out five "dismounts" walking with AK 47s on the other side of the river.

It was the Scout platoon that discovered 40 big Frog missiles on their first day in the city after one soldier noticed a strange looking truck. (It was an engineer in the Scout platoon who found the main command bunker on the river beach front: one scout picked up the phone and found himself connected to an Iraqi officer. The officer spoke English but refused to believe that the Americans were already in Iraq.)

It was the Scout platoon that liberated the starving animals in the private zoo that allegedly belonged to Uday Hussain. They took the two bears, the two tigers, the two cheetahs, the four lions including three cubs and the dogs and let them into the compound their cages abutted on. And they tossed in two sheep for the animals to eat. (Today the bear was still chewing his mutton, the lions were resting in the shade and the cheeters lolled in the grass. The tigers seem to have escaped.)

Now that the Presidential Palace they and the 4/64 occupy is going to become the seat of the new government, the Scouts are looking for a new home. And the place they're looking is the neighborhood around the Presidential Palace, the Beverly Hills of Bagdad.

With only a vague idea of the ideal base in an occupied city, the three humvees full of Scouts pull up into the driveway of mansion after mansion. Usually the doors are unlocked - as if the fleeing owners hoped to spare their little palaces unnecessary destruction. And for the most part they have not been looted. This sector is under tight control by the 2d Brigade and looters who came into the neighborhood were quietly sent packing.

Weapons at the ready they go in, check each room is clear and then assess the place as a possible base of operations. Running water and power would be key assets: the water is off in most of this area - but the main consideration in defensibility. It's what puts a couple of the most beautiful houses they check out of the running. But Captain McFarlane admits that he'd like to sleep in a bed.

A thick layer of dust indicates that these luxurious dwellings have been empty for several weeks at least. The sybaritic Baath party elite that lived here got out long before it was obvious to many foreigners that the regime was doomed.

In almost all of the houses visited by the scouts everything has been cleaned out by the owners. In some there are TVs, ashtrays and sofas. In one there are beds. But in general everything of value was taken and the rooms are bare.

Many of these mansions have tarps over the windows to spare the insides from flying glass. (A sensible measure because the windows in other houses tend to be shattered by distant bomb blasts) and in several of them furniture has been moved away from the windows and placed in the center of living and dining rooms.

Maybe the owners expected to come back in the unlikely event of a Saddam victory or to be able to sell their old property if the regime were defeated.

The first house the soldiers check out is spread out ranch style across an acre of prime land. It was so prime under the Saddam regime that ordinary people weren't even allowed in the area.

"Man it would nice to have a place like this" exclaimed Staff Sgt. Rodney Russel, 22, a member of the Engineer Reconaissance Team who rides with the Scouts, as he looks out across a 50 foot square reception room, all of it in cool marble.

In a large office in the back of the house the desk calender stops at February 5th. Apart from this desk the house contains almost no furniture or any other sign that it has ever been lived in. The second estate visited by the ten Scouts includes not just a guest house that could comfortably house a couple of middle class families but a feature that a James Bond villain would covet: a large indoor swimming pool with glass sides and ceilings that slide back. In the pool area are an elegant bar, his n hers saunas and showers and a permanent massage table near the diving board.

Unlike the pool at Saddam's official but barely lived in Presidential Palace, this one is full of fairly clean looking water and the troops, who haven't showered in a month look at it longingly. A third house at the center of an even larger estate backs onto a large pond with fish feeders on it. There's a dingy and a paddle boat in the water. The green murky pond flows in between several large houses connected by bridges.

This mansion shows signs of more hasty departure. There's a small stuffed toy on the front porch presumably dropped by a child on someone's shoulder, and a Prince tennis racket in the hallway. A photograph of the owner, a republican guard officer - Capt MacFarlane say's it's a colonel -- lies nearby.

And there are several pictures of Saddam on the walls, in various poses. But there aren't enough rooms and there seem to be no showers in this house so the Scout team continues on its real estate mission.

A fourth magnificent dwelling has four floors, at least 10 bedrooms, an elevator, 20 feet ceilings, marble floors and moldings, fine porcelain and gold sinks, central air conditioning by Honeywell and stunning river views. It also boasts several largedouble beds.

But it's when one of the soldiers calls out, "hey its got running water in here" that Capt MacFarlane solemnly announces "Sold!" But they change their mind. As Capt. McFarlane says, "you don't want your back to the river."

They'll have to look at some more places tomorrow

Meanwhile Sgt Russell is looking for more than a place to stay. "Everywhere I go I'm looking for a way into a tunnel, and those underground bunkers that Saddam built. We know they're there and we know they have chemicals in them."