For a continous war update see: The Agonist
For analysis see: dailyKOS and Talking Points Memo
For a blog of an unembedded journalist: Back to Iraq 2.0

Images of War

Eerily quiet capital
An Iraqi woman seen through the window of a press bus walks with a child across an otherwise empty square in downtown Baghdad on Monday.
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The Battle of Baghdad
'Ever so slowly, the suburbs were turned into battlefields'
By Robert Fisk

The Iraqi bodies were piled high in the pick-up truck in front of me, army boots hanging over the tailboard, a soldier with a rifle sitting beside them. Beside the highway, a squad of troops was stacking grenades as the ground beneath us vibrated with the impact of US air strikes. The area was called Qadisiya. It was Iraq's last front line. Thus did the Battle for Baghdad enter its first hours, a conflict that promises to be both dirty and cruel
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Iraq War: The Movie
You don’t have to wait for the film version.

Movie dreams, if they’re grand enough, have a horrible way of becoming reality. In America, where there is so much less to foment terrorist thinking, there was once a film in development called Ten Soldiers, a Lord of the Flies–like cautionary fable about children reverting to violence. The studio handed the project over to Gen. Al Haig, who made the screenwriter rewrite it according to the crazed notions of right-wing think tanks very like the fringe-dwelling loonies who later wrote the 2000 Project for the New American Century (the blueprint these loonies are using to bend the world to their mad, visionary will, now that they’ve corrupted the Supreme Court, seized control of the U.S. government, hypnotized the public, and exploited the opportunity Osama and Saddam have handed them). The movie became Red Dawn, a fantasy about a small band of fanatics defending their home soil against “the enemy”: back then, Russia, Cuba, and pinkos in Mexico. “It will be a surefire international blockbuster,” the right-wingers said. It wasn’t; just a $40 million mediocrity.

But it did succeed in serving as the chief career inspiration for at least one young visionary: Timothy McVeigh, until 9/11 the most destructive terrorist in U.S. history.

How many young Islamic terrorists do you suppose the movie Gulf War II will inspire?
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Support of U.S. Military Role in Mideast Grows

Buoyed by success on the battlefield, most Americans now express support for an expansive U.S. role in the Middle East, with a clear majority backing the war in Iraq and half endorsing military action against Iran if it continues to develop nuclear weapons, according to a new Los Angeles Times poll.
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  thanks to Eschaton

A thirty-year war

The US mistake lies in failing to recognise three key trends. The first is the demographic process that has resulted in many tens of millions of young people who are increasingly marginalised from economic participation. This is compounded by the second trend, the effect of secondary and tertiary education on millions of people across the region, giving them a much clearer understanding of what is happening. Such people all too frequently see their ruling elites as benefiting at their expense as well as being inextricably linked with the US and other western states. The third trend is the existence of new channels of communication like al-Jazeera that present the realities in the Middle East in a way that has not hitherto existed.

The end result is a bitterness that will express itself in many different ways in the coming years, not least in the development of further radical and extreme social movements such as al-Qaida. Even in Iraq itself, there may be sustained resistance to US dominance, but this will be marginal compared with the reaction across the region.
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  thanks to PageCount

  thanks to Politics in the Zeros

U.S. Fumbling Postwar Plan  thanks to CalPundit

Turf War Rages in Washington Over Who Will Rule Iraq

Occupation Preoccupation

The war that may end the age of superpower   thanks to also not found in nature

Iraq Debts Add Up to Trouble
Economists say Bush administration officials are wrong to assume that petroleum revenue will pay for postwar reconstruction.

Unhappy endings
The Downing Street dream factory paints a hopeful postwar future. But everyone else sees potential disaster   thanks to PageCount

Hearts, minds and bodybags
Iraq can't be a Vietnam, pundits insist. Those who were there know better

Bush puts God on his side

Rage, Hubris, and Regime Change  thanks to Talking Points Memo

John Sutherland
There is really on one source of reliable information on this war - and it's coming from Russian spies   thanks to The Agonist