Within the next weeks, not months, there will be a major breakthrough on the benchmarks regarding political reconciliation. And after the last two weeks of being a reservist, you could see Sunnis and Shia and Kurds taking a second look at Iraq.
Graham's prediction are as bad as my Phillies/Red Sox World Series picks. In my defense, my predictions do not effect the lives of U.S. military personal and Iraqi civilians. Contrary to what wingnuts think, there are Iraqis that want the violence to end.
The last time I checked Baghdad Burning was in April 2007 when the blogger and her family were preparing to leave Iraq. Her blog is a deeply personal, brooding diary of events that have transpired since the American occupation. I have often thought of this gifted and articulate young woman, her family, and how they were surviving this catastrophe. Last month, there was a new post (dated September 6, 2007). She writes:
ReplyDeleteI said goodbye to my desk - the one I’d used all through high school and college. I said goodbye to the curtains and the bed and the couch. I said goodbye to the armchair E. and I broke when we were younger. I said goodbye to the big table over which we’d gathered for meals and to do homework. I said goodbye to the ghosts of the framed pictures that once hung on the walls, because the pictures have long since been taken down and stored away - but I knew just what hung where. I said goodbye to the silly board games we inevitably fought over - the Arabic Monopoly with the missing cards and money that no one had the heart to throw away.
I knew then as I know now that these were all just items- people are so much more important. Still, a house is like a museum in that it tells a certain history. You look at a cup or stuffed toy and a chapter of memories opens up before your very eyes.
She and her family survived their passage into Syria where a new life awaits. One would have to be a stone to read her story without shedding a tear. Well worth reading, please check her blog Baghdad Burning at:
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/