Early Saturday, American soldiers cordoned off a predominantly Sunni neighborhood on the outskirts of Balad and checked for guns in every house. The tactics were not pretty: Fearing they might walk into an ambush, the American soldiers kicked open doors and rushed in, with guns drawn. They dragged men out and forced them to squat, with arms behind their heads.

The searches of 70 homes produced no guns and no suspects but seemed to provoke a good deal of fear and anger among many Iraqis whose homes were entered.

Outside one, a two-story middle-class home, 11 Iraqi men sat on their haunches, their unhappiness etched on their faces. In the living room inside, a young Iraqi woman stood with three young girls, their hands held high over their heads.

"I feel bad for these people; I really do," Sgt. Eric Brown said as he stood guard over an Iraqi family taken from its home. "It's so hard to separate the good from the bad."

Yet for all the conflict here, there are signs that even the gulf between the Americans and the Sunni Arabs may not be unbridgeable. Later in the day, Sassaman sat with some Sunni clerics and handed out donations for their mosques.

The clerics posed many questions to their American overlord, about schools and water, about family members detained and about the searching of homes. Sassaman answered each in turn, and on most points, the clerics nodded

Then Sassaman, quite at ease, asked a question of his own.

"Have any of you seen Saddam Hussein?" he asked. "If you find him, I can assure you, you won't have any more problems with your schools."

All the imams laughed, and then they led him to his Humvee and bid him a warm goodbye.