Three Years...
by Riverbend

It has been three years since the beginning of the war that marked the end of Iraq’s independence. Three years of occupation and bloodshed. Spring should be about renewal and rebirth. For Iraqis, spring has been about reliving painful memories and preparing for future disasters. In many ways, this year is like 2003 prior to the war when we were stocking up on fuel, water, food and first aid supplies and medications. We're doing it again this year but now we don't discuss what we're stocking up for. Bombs and B-52's are so much easier to face than other possibilities. I don’t think anyone imagined three years ago that things could be quite this bad today. The last few weeks have been ridden with tension. I’m so tired of it all- we’re all tired.

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Mortars were louder than reason in Baghdad today...

Mortars are blind and whoever uses this kind of dumb weapon that belongs to WWI is blind too. Maybe they make good weapons in open battlefields but using mortars inside crowded cities reflects savage insanity that forces you to pick a mortar-lottery ticket and hope not to be the unfortunate winner. When you count the homes in Baghdad and the number of daily mortars and using some logarithmic equations of probabilities you feel somewhat relieved by knowing that you're unlikely watch a mortar round fall on your head and after each time you hear the bang of one of those dumb things you realize that it fell sufficiently away from you and you hope that it didn't hurt someone. I wasn't home this morning but I was close enough to home to know that the relatively unusual intense bombardment was close to my neighborhood. It still felt 'normal' until my cell phone rang, I picked up and it was my father. Yes dad? Are you coming home soon Mohammed? Yes, why? I just want to tell you not to panic when you see the crowd and police vehicles in our alley… What's wrong? What happened? Don't worry (said the old seasoned former soldier) it's just a mortar round; it hit the home of one of our neighbors, some 60 meters from ours. Anyone hurt? No, no one was hurt….

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  thanks to War and Piece

Iraq: Permanent US Colony
By Dahr Jamail

Why does the Bush Administration refuse to discuss withdrawing occupation forces from Iraq? Why is Halliburton, who landed the no-bid contracts to construct and maintain US military bases in Iraq, posting higher profits than ever before in its 86-year history? Why do these bases in Iraq resemble self-contained cities as much as military outposts?

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On Call in Hell
He left a desk job for the front lines of Fallujah—and a horror show few doctors ever see. How Richard Jadick earned his Bronze Star.

Tortured, shot, ambushed, victims are found dumped outside morgues. What is happening to Iraq's intellectuals is chilling

It is estimated that between 250 and 500 intellectuals have been killed or have disappeared since the fall of Saddam Hussein. There is a rising surge of anger over attacks on Iraq's intellectuals and many believe some of the killings may be part of a deliberate policy of targeting those who speak out against the "occupation".

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  thanks to Yolanda Flanagan

Expert on Iraq: 'We're In a Civil War'
U.S. Officials Deny Violence Has Risen to That Level, but ABC News Analysts See a 'Serious Lack of Realism'

  thanks to AMERICAblog

God: I've lost faith in Blair
All the signs are that the Almighty is unhappy about efforts to implicate Him in the attack on Iraq
by Terry Jones (Yes, that Terry Jones.)

A high-level leak has revealed that God is "furious" at Tony Blair's attempts to implicate him in the bombing of Iraq. Sources close to the archangel Gabriel report him as describing the Almighty as "hopping mad ... with sanctimonious yet unscrupulous politicians claiming He would condone their bestial activities when He has no way of going public Himself, owing to the MMW agreement" (a reference to the long-established Moving in Mysterious Ways concordat).

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And always check out Juan Cole to find out what is happening in Iraq: