I’m going to follow Alice’s lead and link to this Citizen Smash post of a letter he says is from a US Marine Corps major in Baghdad.

There has been a lot of depressing news and appraisals of the situation in Iraq lately. It can be hard to figure out what’s true and what is exaggeration and herd-like agreement based on little evidence.

I don’t know the details of the situation there better than anyone else. But, it’s been my impression that our forces have been performing very capably and have learned to adapt to changing situations and still manage to achieve success after success. I also know that there are many Iraqis who are happy about the changes that our forces are bringing about, even if they’d prefer that the presence of foreign forces wasn’t necessary. I don’t know what the relative numbers of these people are, but I suspect that it’s the vast majority, and I have lost much confidence in our press corps to report accurately about this.

So, while the situation could really change, I remain optimistic about our chances to strike many more successful blows against tyranny and for liberalization in the region, if bad political decisions don’t interfere.