This is an excellent overview of where we are in Iraq...

Looking at Iraq
by Steve Gilliard

Every day, US forces go out, take casualities and go back to their bases, trying to survive yet another attack that night. The US, in two years, have lost lives and material, but gained little. There is not one area the US can say that guerrillas cannot operate. And that is the most important fact. After two years and 1500 dead, the guerrillas control the highway to the airport, Baghdad's main drags and the country's highways. This is not winning.

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How not to fight a war
by Steve Gilliard

There is a limit to the stress men can take, and send them back to intense combat is one way to ensure they fail and unless the extremely unpopular draft is reinstituted, the pool of new recruits is limited. Even poor kids would rather work in Wal Mart than patrol Iraq. How bad is it? All war brings tragedy, but here's a story from a recent Nightline. A soldier was in Iraq four days before he was wounded. He was sent home and in short order was found to have uncontrolled shakes and PTSD. He lives alone on his farm. He can't work. His wife left him, after she came out of the bathroom one night with a towel wrapped around her head and he pointed a gun at her. He wants to finish his degree, but he can't concentrate long enough to attend school. So he lives, alone and scarred on a Texas farm. When the warbloggers talk about how we "liberated" Iraq, remember that soldier. He, not Assrocket and Goldberg, is paying the price for this war. It's easy to talk tough and cheer others on. It is very difficult to climb into a truck with an M-4 and drive around an Iraqi town every day for a year. And for some people, it never, ever ends. Even if they have all their limbs.

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The Girl Blogger from Iraq
Riverbend talks about her life, Iraq, and the world at large -- and how her blog makes sense of them all.

On Aug. 17, 2003, Riverbend posted the first entry of her blog, where she introduced herself to her readers: "I'm female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. That's all you need to know. It's all that matters these days anyway." Nearly two years later, the readers of “Baghdad Burning” know a whole lot more – both about Riverbend and Iraq. We now know that she has not just survived the war, but prevailed over its horrors, emerging from its ruins as a passionate advocate for her people and an incisive critic of the occupation. Even the most casual visitor to her site cannot fail to be impressed by her insight into the tragic, onerous, and sometimes absurd reality of everyday life in Iraq. As Village Voice correspondent James Ridgeway notes in the introduction to her new book -- an eponymously named collection of her blog entries -- "this anonymous 'girl blog' has made the war and occupation real in terms that no professional journalist could hope to achieve." She responded to AlterNet's questions via e-mail from her home in Baghdad.

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  thanks to Antiwar.com

Riverbend's blog, Baghdad Burning, should be required reading for everyone!

What I Didn't See in Iraq

Trust me when I tell you things are so much better in Iraq," said one US military official to me on my recent visit to that war-ravaged country. I didn't know whether to scream or pull the remaining two strands of hair out of my head. I was in Iraq as part of a delegation of eight members of Congress, led by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Everything we have been told about Iraq by the Bush Administration has either been an outright lie or overwhelmingly false. There were no weapons of mass destruction; we have not been greeted as liberators; and the cost in terms of blood and treasure has outpaced even their worst-case scenarios. Trust is something I cannot give to this Administration. If things in Iraq are so much better, why are we not decreasing the number of US forces there? Why is the insurgency showing no signs of waning? Why are we being told that in a few months the Administration will again ask Congress for billions of dollars more to fight the war? Why, according to the World Food Program, is hunger among the Iraqi people getting worse? It's time for some candor, but candor is hard to come by in Iraq. We were in Iraq for one day--for security reasons, it is US policy that Congressional delegations are not allowed to spend the night. We spent most of our time in the heavily fortified Green Zone, which serves as coalition headquarters. It's the most heavily guarded encampment I've ever seen--and it still gets attacked. I even had armed guards accompany me to the bathroom. The briefings we received from US military and diplomatic officials were, to say the least, unsatisfying. The Nixonian approach that our military and diplomatic leaders have adopted in dealing with visiting members of Congress is aimed more at saving face than at engaging in an honest dialogue. At first, our briefers wanted to get away with slick slide presentations, but we insisted on asking real questions and attempting to get real answers.

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  thanks to Antiwar.com

Iraqi Lawmaker Says U.S. Soldier Grabbed His Throat

An Iraqi lawmaker accused a U.S. soldier of grabbing him by the throat and shoving him to the ground Tuesday after he parked his car in Baghdad's Green Zone. Fattah al-Sheikh, an independent, said he had parked his car before a session of parliament when U.S. troops approached him and told him he didn't have the right permit. He said a soldier then kicked his car, insulted him and grabbed him by the throat with both hands as others looked on, before tying his hands behind his back with white plastic cuffs and shoving him to the ground. "I don't speak English and so I said to the Iraqi translator with them, 'Tell them that I am a member of parliament,' and he replied, 'To hell with you, we are Americans,"' Sheikh told parliament, fighting back tears as he recounted the story.

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  thanks to Drudge Report

20 Killed, 42 Wounded
US Troops Humiliate Member of Parliament
by Juan Cole

A tearful member of the Iraqi parliament, Fattah al-Shaikh, stood up before other MPs and told the story of how he was attacked and detained by US troops when he attempted to enter the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area near downtown Baghdad where parliament is held and the US embassy is situated. Wire services report that he said, '“I don’t speak English and so I said to the Iraqi translator with them, ‘Tell them that I am a member of parliament’, and he replied, ‘To hell with you, we are Americans.'" ' Al-Hayat reported that al-Shaikh, a member of the Muqtada al-Sadr bloc, said the US troops put their boots on his neck and handcuffed him. The Iraqi parliament was thrown into an uproar by the account, and demanded a US apology from the highest levels of government. Others demanded that the site of parliament meetings be changed. (This is not the first complaint by a parliamentarian of being manhandled). [...] The incident will seem minor to most Americans and few will see this Reuters photograph reprinted from al-Hayat (which is not the one featured at the Reuters story on the incident on the Web). But such an incident is a serious affront to national honor, and Iraqi male politicians don't often weep. It should be remembered that someday not so far from now, the US will come to the Iraqi parliament for a status of forces agreement (SOFA), and Fattah al-Shaikh and his friend will vote on it.

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Senate OKs $81B for Iraq, Afghanistan

  thanks to Antiwar.com