Summary here and here.

So how’s that security going?

The two armored vans left a branch of the Warka Bank on Thursday around noon, loaded with 1.191 billion dinars, or nearly $800,000. Almost immediately, on a busy street near the Baghdad zoo, the drivers spotted an oncoming Iraqi Army convoy, led by a shiny new Humvee. They followed standard procedure and pulled over.

But the convoy stopped, and an officer politely ordered the surprised drivers and guards to lay down their guns while his men searched the vans for bombs.

Within minutes all eight drivers and guards had been handcuffed and locked in the back of one of the vans on a suffocating 120-degree day, the cash had been stolen by the men in the convoy – whoever they were – and the Iraqi banking system marked another day of its slow slide into oblivion.

The only thing atypical about Thursday’s robbery, which was described by bank and Interior Ministry officials, is that most private banks try to avoid using armored vans, because they draw too much attention, and instead toss sacks of cash into ordinary cars for furtive dashes through the streets of Baghdad.

[snip]

Hussein al-Uzri, president and chairman of the Trade Bank of Iraq, a state-owned bank, said the risks of such deliveries had to be measured in relative terms. “Anywhere else in the world, throwing a few million dollars in the back of a Mazda and driving from the Central Bank is crazy,” he said. “But many people will say that living in Baghdad is crazy.”

[snip]

The banks’ troubles have had a ripple effect. Iraqi companies, already struggling in a devastated economy, cannot get enough cash to meet their payrolls, said Hashim T. Atrikchi, acting manager of the Iraqi Federation of Industries and chairman of the Arab Federation of Plastic Manufacturers.

[snip]

Bank officials estimate that there has been an average of about one major robbery a month this year. Some banks seem to be particularly unlucky: only a week before Thursday’s holdup, robbers tried to steal a shipment of $500,000 from the Warka Bank, though in that case the police foiled the attempt, bank officials said. Article

Chaos abides. The relentless quotidian wearing down of spirit.

The constant threat has forced a redesign of the urban landscape. Neighborhoods have been carved up by concrete barriers and roadblocks, forcing residents to relearn how to get around town. Soldiers and the police are everywhere.

But the violence has reconfigured the emotional geography as well – and this is what Umm Hassan was saying. Iraqis live with the creeping, paralyzing dread that anything can happen at any time, and when it does, they will be powerless to stop it.

So they struggle to control their environment by limiting their movement, cutting off all but the most essential contact with other people and staying indoors. The space in which people believe they can safely operate shrinks with every attack, no matter where it occurs.

[snip]

“There is a new saying,” she went on. “‘We’re all sentenced to death but we don’t know when.’” Indeed, one of the greatest victims of the war is certainty. There’s uncertainty about who rules and who can be trusted. There’s uncertainty about the safety of moving from point A to point B, the source of the next meal, the meaning of a glance. Article

Green is the main defendant in the Haditha murder/rape investigation (and the one being tried in the civilian court system). He’s a piece of work, huh? The others charged were ‘led’ (and followed the lead) of such as this? No one higher up flagged him immediately?

Writing in Sunday’s editions of The Washington Post, Andrew Tilghman, a former correspondent for the US military newspaper Stars And Stripes, said he interviewed Green several times in February at his unit south of Baghdad.

“I came over here because I wanted to kill people,” he quoted Green as saying. “The truth is, it wasn’t all I thought it was cracked up to be.

“I mean, I thought killing somebody would be this life-changing experience,” Green was quoted as saying. “And then I did it, and I was like, ‘All right, whatever.’”

“I shot a guy who wouldn’t stop when we were out at a traffic checkpoint and it was like nothing,” Green was quoted as saying. “Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant.

“I mean, you kill somebody and it’s like, ‘All right, let’s go get some pizza.’” Article

In Ramadi, the oft-neglected hot war continues.

In just four months, one Marine has fired 27 rockets. Another estimates he’s fired 5,000 rounds from a .50-caliber machine gun. One marksman has 20 confirmed kills. His superiors believe he’s probably killed another 40 but they aren’t sure.

[snip]

Residents of Ramadi are afraid of even walking near the offices of the Anbar provincial government, which is supposed to administer an area the size of North Carolina, and with about one million inhabitants.

[snip]

U.S. officials hope the national unity government that took office this spring with greater Sunni Arab representation will persuade some insurgents to lay down their arms. But the provincial government here — comparable to state governments in the United States — is still run by officials handpicked by Americans or U.S.-chosen councils. Article

Heck, this is a Congress with the majority of the same party as holds the White House, filled with cheerleaders for the administration, and they are shut out, snubbed and treated as doormats. How often do the holders of the pursestrings in Congress have to be proven to have been kept in the dark, shilled and stepped on before they sit up and take notice? (emphasis added)

The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.

The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. Article

Nothing to comment about paticularly, just a sidelight of passing interest.

One of Command Sgt. Major Lawrence A. Hall’s biggest worries in Iraq is Gatorade.…

Hall, of the Army’s 1st Squadron, 167th Cavalry, learned that the medical staff is starting to notice an increase in kidney stones and gall stones in troops. They believe its because the guys … and gals … are drinking a lot of Gatorade and at the same time, not getting enough exercise. So soldiers are encouraged to either exercise more or drink water instead of Gatorade. Theyre also rationing the amount of Gatorade troops can pick up at the dining facility to two bottles per person, whereas in the past, troops could … and often did … fill up every pocket with a bottle of the green or orange liquid. Article