Seven US soldiers on the state of Iraq

The New York Times has an interesting op-ed by seven US soldiers at the end of their tours of duty in Iraq: Link. It's a real change to hear news from on the ground there. Journalists have next to no access in Iraq today, so when it's spoken about at all, we tend to only hear the blather of idealogues restating the same opinion they had three years ago -- for or against.

Six months ago I wrote about Iraq, got glum, quoted Billy Bragg, tied myself in knots and said I was 51 per cent in favour of a withdrawal. In retrospect, even that seems pretty naively optimistic about the occupation.

In case you missed it, see George W. Bush this week comparing Vietnam to Iraq as an argument for staying: Link. His analogy benefits from the fact that we don't know how fab things might have gone in Vietnam if America had stayed the course there.