A very long but very good article by Michael Yon. He went to Iraq to see for himself what was happening and report on it.


More than a year ago, I wrote from the “Sunni Triangle” that Iraq was in the midst of a civil war, words that received little attention then. I had published that dispatch about three weeks after the unexpected but overwhelming success of the first Iraqi elections. People were understandably distracted by the post-vote euphoria, while the media was largely busy explaining how they so misjudged the mood of the Iraqi people. Nearly all their pundits predicted a gloomy, violence-ridden election day with poor turnout. Instead, the day was relatively peaceful and Iraqi voter turnout was nothing less than stunning. Looking ahead from that moment, knowing that planning for the future is best done with a clear memory, I wrote on 23 February 2005: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/