The Guardian has an interesting bit of reportage on how the Marines are doing in Iraq. Choice quote:

A few miles from the bridge to the south lie the ruins of the ancient city of Ur, founded 8,000 years ago, the birth place of Abraham and a flourishing metropolis at a time when the inhabitants of north-west Europe were still walking round in animal skins.

Sgt Sprague, from White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia, passed it on his way north, but he never knew it was there.

"I've been all the way through this desert from Basra to here and I ain't seen one shopping mall or fast food restaurant," he said. "These people got nothing. Even in a little town like ours of twenty five hundred people you got a McDonald's at one end and a Hardee's at the other."

I've been hoping that perhaps some positive fallout of this war might be a closer alignment of Iraqi culture and ours, maybe some war brides, some Marines and Army boys who go over there and get their consciousness expanded. I was going to say "minds blown," but that's too close to "heads blown off," and I don't want any of that. Usually after a war there's an uptick in freethinking five to ten years later. The next decade is going to be interesting, and in spite of Everything, there are plenty of reasons to stay hopeful.