...from Baghdad:

Still living in Baghdad, this family has not fled the community it lives in. Shia and Sunni live on both sides of the home.

Some people forget that the sectarian violence kicked off in 2005 as part a deliberate strategy by AQIZ. Too many people assume that Sunni and Shia in Iraq have been killing each other for centuries.

The war in Iraq is plagued by a Congress who lacks the information to cast a vote and a public who lacks the basic knowledge to take part in an opinion poll.

...Is there hope for Baghdad? Yes. The additional U.S. forces from the surge are already showing limited signs of success. They are not the signs quantified by London or D.C. think tanks.

Every Battalion Commander I talked with gave me the same metrics to measure success--Commerce, people returning to their homes, essential services, kids playing soccer in fields they haven't played on in 2 years, professionalization of the police and security services.

Those are things that do not fit well in an index and things a person can only see on the ground by going back to the same areas of operation every few months.

Which is why I will be back in Dora and West Rasheed in a few months.

all of those metrics have almost no correlation to the
metrics of a military unit.

Those are the metrics of a mayor or a city council.

They're appropriate metrics for building a new nation which, for better or worse, is currently the mission in Iraq. Unless you want to count success by how many people we kill and how many structures we destroy.

Here's something to metricate. According to the May 14 issue of Time there were 14,000 terrrorist attacks around the globe in 2006. Forty seven percent of those took place in Iraq accounting for two thirds of all fatalities. There were somewhat fewer terrorist attacks in Iraq before the war.

I am sure the dead would agree they were better off before the war.

I am sure the dead would agree they were better off before the war.

No doubt. But I suspect that the women who since haven't been taken to the "rape rooms," and those who would have died had Saddam stayed in power would disagree.

"The war in Iraq is plagued by a Congress who lacks the information to cast a vote and a public who lacks the basic knowledge to take part in an opinion poll."

Not to offend the agnostics and atheists here but all I can add to the above is AMEN!

Forty seven percent of those took place in Iraq accounting for two thirds of all fatalities. There were somewhat fewer terrorist attacks in Iraq before the war.

But more terrorist attacks in America.

Measuring terrorist attacks in Iraq rather than terrorist attacks in America misses the point. Helping Iraqis might be a nice side effect, but it's not the reason why we have a military.

"But I suspect that the women who since haven't been taken to the "r*pe rooms," and those who would have died had Saddam stayed in power would disagree."

What about the women could work and/or leave home without a male relative before the war. Riverbend, for example?

How about the statistics on the rate at which doctors and other professionals have been leaving the country?