"A CAUSE THAT IS, AT BEST, STILL A CONCEPT"

Baghdad summers are hot, incessantly hot, unrelentingly hot and so many other kinds of hot there is really no point trying to capture the heat in words. Eskimos may have dozens of different words for snow, but Army soldiers have at least as many words for Iraq's summer heat, none of which can be printed in a family newspaper.

If a single image had to be chosen to reflect what the life of a soldier is like in Baghdad, it would probably feature a soldier with an M-16 in one hand and a 1.5 liter plastic bottle of water in the other hand.

From a measured scientific perspective a common Baghdad day includes 90 degree temperatures by 9 a.m. and it can still be more than 100 degrees after 10 p.m...

Two things are true about Army life, some soldier always has it better and some soldier always has it worse. There is something striking about seeing a fuel tanker truck driver just before noon in July passed out on his cot set up on the dusty ground in the quickly disappearing shadow of his truck. Baghdad may be about as bad as Army duty assignments get, but these soldiers have adapted and are getting their job done with whatever they have to work with.

Nobody here is playing around. Col. Russ Gold's constant "3-P" admonition sums up most soldiers' demeanor as they carry out their jobs. "Be professional, be polite and be prepared to kill."...

Yesteryear's black and white movie of the wet-behind-the-ears Italian kid from Brooklyn thrown into combat after basic training doesn't apply. Almost every soldier I've met in Baghdad is well-trained, many have college degrees and many have been hardened by prior tours of duty in Bosnia, Korea, and other places not renowned for their tourism trade. Similarly, the soldier as baby killer image of a past generation doesn't apply. These are well-trained, professional soldiers.

Unfortunately for soldiers, their training and experience can not solve a paradox they did not create. A decade of sanctions may have damaged Iraq's economy, but the looting that occurred in the days after Saddam Hussein's downfall all but wiped it out.

In just a few days in April, Iraqi-on-Iraqi thievery and vandalism turned much of Baghdad into what one soldier likened to a scene from "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" after the Grinch took everything up the chimneys of Whoville including a last morsel of cheese he snagged from a mouse.

The best artilce about the daily lives of soldiers in Baghdad I've read. Read the whole thing here.