GETTING WORSE?

I'm not sure...but my sense of unease is growing.

U.S. forces came under widespread attack again Thursday, with two soldiers apparently abducted and one killed in a series of ambushes in and around Baghdad.

Reports of attacks on troops streamed in throughout the day Thursday.

At midday, a trailer in a U.S. military convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in southern Baghdad, and a truck was set afire by local residents protesting the U.S. presence in Iraq, witnesses said. By early evening, al-Jazeera television reported a grenade attack on an American vehicle in the southern town of An Najaf. Military spokesmen could not confirm either attack.

In another incident, a bomb exploded on a road to the Baghdad airport, killing one U.S. soldier and wounding eight others, according to Maj. William Thurmond, another military spokesman in the capital. Two Iraqi electricity workers were killed when a convoy of U.S. and Iraqi civilian vehicles was attacked with hand grenades in west Baghdad.

A static Army becomes a rich target once the locals lose their respect or fear for it. And at that point only more violence can restore that fear and respect.

But that leads to a cycle of violence and resentment.

Read about it here.

AND ANOTHER?

Also Friday, a gunman shot a U.S. soldier shopping for video compact discs on a sidewalk in northwest Baghdad, witnesses said. Ammar Saad, a 44-year-old vendor, said the soldier was shot in the neck at close range and appeared to have been killed. U.S. military spokesmen in Baghdad said they had heard of the incident but were unable to confirm it.

Saad and another witness, 20-year-old porter Jassem Obeid, said the assailant escaped into crowds at a nearby market.

I grow anxious.