NO CHRONICLE OF THE soldiers efforts in the rebuilding of Iraq can ignore stories like these, even though these are the ones that you probably hear on the headlines at home. So I will post them.

A U.S. soldier was killed and four companions wounded yesterday in an attack near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, north of the capital, a military statement said.

It was at least the seventh U.S. soldier killed in attacks in Iraq during the past two weeks as unrest plagues the country.

As tension increased about the role of religious leaders in postwar Iraq, U.S. forces yesterday raided a Baghdad office of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), an armed Muslim Shi'ite group with ties to Iran.

The entire story is here.