River says that things haven’t improved one bit, in fact they’ve gotten much worse. Kids are home from school more often than they go (but hey, we rebuilt the schools after we blew them up! At least it’s a start)…

Baghdad Burning: “Three years later and the nightmares of bombings and of shock and awe have evolved into another sort of nightmare. The difference between now and then was that three years ago, we were still worrying about material things- possessions, houses, cars, electricity, water, fuel… It’s difficult to define what worries us most now. Even the most cynical war critics couldn’t imagine the country being this bad three years after the war… Allah yistur min il rab3a (God protect us from the fourth year). ”