Paradise Lost?

Michael Totten from Kurdish Iraq

The Kurds have been through decades of fascism, genocide, and war. They suffered more than any other group of Iraqis. Northern Iraq endured more recent hardship than any other place I have ever been in my life. Scratch just beneath the happy veneer of Iraqi Kurdish adults and you’ll find people with family members murdered by Baathists, who experienced unimaginable oppression by a regime that wanted to completely erase them, and who fled to the mountains during the uprising in 1991 when the cities of Iraqi Kurdistan were emptied of people. They still have no sewage system, and they still only have a few hours of electricity each day.

It's Iraq without "insurgents"

Attacks In Baghdad Kill 16, Including 5 Children

BAGHDAD, Feb. 15 -- As Iraqi politicians debated the formation of a government on Wednesday, a wave of gun and bomb attacks killed at least 16 people in the capital, including five children.

Three children were killed and two wounded when a bomb exploded outside the Karama primary school in the Saydiyah neighborhood of southeastern Baghdad, said Gen. Salman Hassan Shammari of the Iraqi police. A second roadside bomb killed two children and wounded four more in the Fadhl neighborhood, he said. It was unclear who detonated the bombs or why.

And perhaps some dark night in the not too distant future a surviving Baghdad child may notice the glow of electric light just over the northern horizon, and ask why.