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The Real Iraq Story Americans don’t often get the right picture out of Iraq. By Karl Zinsmeister How insightful is the Iraq reporting that you've been consuming? Take a little test. If I tell you that scores of Iraqi detainees have been killed and maimed this year in Abu Ghraib prison, you may not be surprised. But you're probably guessing wrong about who hurt them. The moronic American guards who are now on trial for improperly humiliating some Iraqis caused no deaths or injuries: The many casualties in the prison were all inflicted by Iraq's guerilla terrorists. During this spring's...

Part I RCP: Let’s set the stage for people who may not be familiar with the book. You were embedded with U.S. troops during the invasion of 2003. You chronicled that experience in the book “Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq.” And then you went back to Iraq again early this year for another look, sort of a close up look at the insurgency and the reconstruction process. And that’s your current book, “Dawn Over Baghdad: How the U.S. Military is Using Bullets and Ballots to Remake Iraq.”Zinsmeister: That’s right. One...

A recent, widely circulated Associated Press story noted that military intelligence estimates of guerrillas operating in Iraq today have been raised to as many as 20,000 men. Under the headline "Iraq insurgency larger than thought," this information was presented in alarmed tones. Having spent three months embedded with Coalition troops on combat patrol in Iraq, let me acknowledge the insurgents are nasty and not to be taken lightly. But if one observes with the eye of a dispassionate historian rather than an alarmed journalist, the most significant conclusion to be drawn from the latest estimates of guerrilla numbers is that...

We are now 16 months into the Iraq war. At a similar stage in earlier American wars, how were our forces faring? Well, at about this point in the French and Indian Wars George Washington had been defeated and forced to surrender at Fort Necessity (he was released after being disarmed), and then disastrously beaten in a fight where his unit of 1,400 men took 900 casualties and ended up running away. (Washington himself was not injured but had two horses shot from under him, and took four bullets through his coat.) Washington's next experience of war, in the American...

These are two excerpts from a 27-page article presenting photos and reporting from Baghdad and Fallujah. Subscribe now, or order a single copy of the April/May 2004 issue to read the full report. ***** In Iraq, the roles of good cop and bad cop must be filled by the same American soldiers, and today it is time for the 82nd to rap some knuckles. Two of the most inflammatory imams in southern Baghdad--Sheik Akram of the Mekkad al-Mokarama mosque, and Sheik Riyad of Abu Bakr--have been summoned to appear before Col. Fuller. Despite being called to the police station on...

<p>At the first anniversary of the war that removed Saddam Hussein and set Iraq and the rest of the Middle East on a dramatically new path, about 400 American men and women have been killed in action.</p> <p>Each of those lost sons or husbands or daughters is a source of heartache for their families, and for all Americans. They're also a reminder that, as the saying goes, "Freedom's not free."</p>

Thanksgiving has just passed, and the first American troops to deploy for the Iraq War are nearing their one-year anniversary overseas. That makes it a good time to remember some families in this country to whom the rest of us owe a great deal. Take, for example, the family of Sean Shields, the young American I photographed in combat for the cover of my new book Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq. Lieutenant Shields, currently stationed near Baghdad, is the third generation of his clan to serve in the U.S. Army...

Thanksgiving has just passed, and the first American troops to deploy for the Iraq War are nearing their one-year anniversary overseas. That makes it a good time to remember some families in this country to whom the rest of us owe a great deal. Take, for example, the family of Sean Shields, the young American I photographed in combat for the cover of my new book Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq. Lieutenant Shields, currently stationed near Baghdad, is the third generation of his clan to serve in the U.S. Army...

Bird's EyeKarl Zinsmeister Old And In The Way  In April of this year, I was asked by the State Department to give a presentation on American culture at a large conference of European academics, government officials, and businessmen held in Warsaw, Poland. The event was sponsored by a major German foundation, and there were hundreds of Germans and Poles in attendance, plus smaller numbers of Brits, Scandinavians, Dutch, and other Europeans. There were barons and sirs and Danish executresses in microskirts and fey Frenchmen and Italian journalists sucking cigarettes as if a firing squad awaited--the whole panoply of Eurocharacters,...