Juan Cole today:

Look, I lived in the midst of a civil war in the late 1970s in Beirut. I know exactly what it looks and smells like. The inexperienced often assume that when a guerrilla war or a civil war is going on, life grinds to a standstill. Not so. People go shopping for food. They drive where they need to go as long as they don't hear that there is a firefight in that area. They go to work if they still have work. Life goes on. It is just that, unexpectedly, a mortar shell might land near you. Or the person ahead of you in line outside the bakery might fall dead, victim of a sniper's bullet. The bazaars are bustling some days (all the moreso because it is good to stock up on supplies the days when the violence isn't so bad). So nothing that John McCain saw in Baghdad on Sunday meant a damn thing. Not a goddamn thing.

That's him just warming up. There's more, before and after, including praise for good journalists and even some kind words for Gen. Petraeus. Read more…

Meet the New Boss. Seasoned Vet's take on rearranging the Sundeck Chairs in the Green Zone:

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Somebody, somewhere, someday was going to be driven over the edge, unable to fight off the horror being done in our name with any other weapon. In retrospect I can't think of anybody (in this country at least) who has earned the right but Juan Cole:

In the continuing Iraqi Horror Picture Show, police found 9 heads along a road at Hadid in Diyala on Tuesday, wrapped in plastic and stuffed in fruit cases. Read more…