From the Embassy, a Grim Report

18 June Washington Post - From the Embassy, a Grim Report.

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Hours before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees. This cable, marked "sensitive" and obtained by The Washington Post, outlines in spare prose the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees' constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government.

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AMEMBASSY BAGHDAD 121430Z JUN 06 (Posted to the 'Net by the Washington Post)

CFR, 22 Jun 06: Measuring Progress in Iraq

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As the war in Iraq is hotly debated in the halls of Congress (WashPost), a question continues to vex American foreign policymakers: Are we making any headway? A glance at various quality-of-life indicators and statistics on the rebuilding of Iraq's infrastructure—as explained in this new Backgrounder—indicate a decided lack of progress. Electricity output has flat-lined. Potable water remains scarce. And despite holding one of the largest crude reserves in the world, Iraq still produces less oil than Brazil, a nation known more for its black coffee than its black gold.

But these indicators, while important, do not paint a complete picture. More important, says CFR Senior Defense Fellow Stephen Biddle, is whether Iraq's main ethno-religious identities—the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds—are making progress toward reaching a communal power-sharing agreement. Only such an arrangement, he argues, can reduce the cycle of violence.

A recent poll backs up Biddle's claim. Security, not jobs or round-the-clock electricity, is what ordinary Iraqis desire most. They have relied increasingly on alternative means—local militias, insurgents, organized criminals—to fill in the government's security void...

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