Iraq News (11 Mar)

The Good: Not much good news in the last 24 hours, it was a pretty shitty day for our fighting forces, but the US did blow up a torture house south of Baghdad to impress the local sheiks and show that the US forces were there to combat extremist violence.

The Bad: A significant amount of violence as 5 soldiers were killed by a suicde attacker in the Mansoor district of Baghdad, and 3 soldiers were killed in Diyala by an IED attack. The soldiers in Baghdad were talking with the locals about their concerns, which is a proven effective tactic towards counter-insurgency, when they were hit by a suicidal maniac. This is a terrible day...Also, a prominet Sahwa sheikh was assassinated along with some family members by a female suicide bomber in Baqouba. And rarely do the Kurdish provinces suffer from extremist attacks, but a suicide bomber killed 1 in Sulaymaniyah outside a fancy hotel.

The Ugly: KBR is not alone in unethical tax-evasion practices. Now it seems Blackwater is being scrutinized as well. An exhaustive Pentagon-sponsored study is set to be released that shows Saddam Hussein did not have ties to Al-Qaeda prior to the invasion. Nothing new there.

8 Soldiers KIA...RIP