Back in Iraq, Jarred by the Calm - Dexter Filkens, New York Times

... When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope. The questions are jarring, too. Is it really different now? Is this something like peace or victory? And, if so, for whom: the Americans or the Iraqis?

There are plenty of reasons why this peace may only amount to a cease-fire, fragile and reversible. The “surge” of American troops is over. The Iraqis are moving to take their country back, yet they wonder what might happen when the Americans’ restraining presence is gone. The Awakening, a poetic name for paying former Sunni insurgents not to kill Americans or Iraqis, could fall apart, just as the Shiite Mahdi Army could reanimate itself as quickly as it disappeared. Politics in Iraq remains frozen in sectarian stalemate; the country’s leaders cannot even agree to set a date for provincial elections, which might hand power to groups that never had it before. The mountain of oil money, piled ever higher by record oil prices, may become another reason to spill blood...
Tom Ricks's Inbox - Tom Ricks, Washington Post

Some very senior Bush administration officials are rushing to claim credit for backing the "surge" of US troops to Iraq, calling it the turning point in the war. But before they spike the ball into the end zone, they might want to listen to John McCreary, a retired analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, who now puts out a daily e-mail report called "NightWatch." He brings the savvy of a career intelligence official to bear on the day's events - a function similar to the one he used to perform for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Here, in part of his Sept. 11, 2008, bulletin, McCreary explains why he expects violence to increase in Iraq...