Update: Iraq

The 4th Infantry Division: "'We slowly drove past 4th Infantry guys looking mean and ugly,' recalled Sgt. Kayla Williams, then a military intelligence specialist in the 101st Airborne. 'They stood on top of their trucks, their weapons pointed directly at civilians … What could these locals possibly have done? Why was this intimidation necessary? No one explained anything, but it looked weird and felt wrong.'"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300495.html

Instead of home, Baghdad: "Defense Department officials announced yesterday that the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which has been deployed in Mosul since last summer, will be extended … the extension means that about 3,700 troops who had been planning to return home over the next two weeks probably will remain for at least the next six weeks and possibly as long as four months, this time in the most violent area of the country."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701537.html

Juan Cole on the shell game: "There is nothing obvious in this plan that would make you think it will succeed where other such plans have not. And, if they are moving US troops from someplace else to Baghdad, wherever they moved from would be in danger of falling into instability. This thing has become a shell game."
http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/maliki-and-bush-pledge-troops-to.html

Upscale neighborhood bombed: "At least 27 Iraqi civilians were killed and 100 wounded after a car bomb, mortars and rockets ripped through a busy shopping district of Baghdad early Thursday … Police said one of the residential buildings in the Karrada area, a mixed commercial–residential district was hit by a Katyusha rocket … The section of the neighborhood targeted is home to many Shiite politicians from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution."
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/27/iraq.main/index.html

Lebanon & Iraq: "Maliki's stance highlighted a major problem facing the Bush Administration's Middle East crisis: The U.S. has viewed Israel's fight with Hizballah as an opportunity to rally Arab support against growing Iranian influence in the Middle East. But it is not even able to rally the support of Iraq, an Arab government dependent for its security on U.S. troops."
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1220059,00.html

Waiting to be blown up: "Army Staff Sgt. Jose Sixtos considered the simple question about morale for more than an hour. 'Think of what you hate most about your job. Then think of doing what you hate most for five straight hours, every single day, sometimes twice a day, in 120–degree heat,' he said. 'Then ask how morale is.' Frustrated? 'You have no idea,' he said … 'It sucks. Honestly, it just feels like we're driving around waiting to get blown up. That's the most honest answer I could give you,' said Spec. Tim Ivey, 28, of San Antonio, a muscular former backup fullback for Baylor University."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/26/AR2006072601666.html

2565: "Four U.S. Marines were killed in combat Thursday in Iraq's Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said … Thirty–eight U.S. troops have died in Iraq during July. Since the start of the war, 2,565 U.S. troops have died in Iraq. Seven Department of Defense civilian employees have also died in Iraq."
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/29/iraq.main/index.html