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Monday July 28th, 2003

The military reported a U.S. soldier killed in an attack in the capital, while guerrillas blew up a major civilian bridge in an attempt to disrupt the U.S. occupation.

Human Rights Watch has sharply criticised the United States and other foreign power-brokers in Afghanistan for failing to stem right abuses in the country, which it says could derail elections due next June. 

Both Reed and Harris say the poor living conditions, the heat and the dust, (which Harris said forces the troops to put everything in plastic bags,) aren't the only drags on morale. There's also the lack of information. "They don't get news," said Reed, who bundles up Sunday papers to send to her husband nearly every week, and says it was she who first told her husband about the deaths last week of Saddam Hussein's sons. 

Bush has managed to forestall the competence question domestically, despite a host of dubious decisions and acts. But his lack of domestic competence in Iraq may be his greatest weakness and his ultimate undoing. 

Caked pools of blood and a bullet hole in the window of Baghdad's al-Sa'ah restaurant are the only remaining signs of a U.S. raid that killed five Iraqi civilians as they unwittingly drove into a firestorm. 

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