Is the American occupation of Iraq driving Iraqis further toward religious fanatacism? This is the assertion of the female blogger from Iraq whose blog, Baghdad Burning, has an enlightening post about the recent elections and the prevalence of Shia, Iran-influenced candidates.

For those of us hungry for news of the good things we are doing to help stabilize and reconstruct Iraq, there is this story on the US-led efforts to increase electricity. Unfortunately, the news is not good. It appears that much time, money, and energy has been spent to build a system which will need deisel fuel (unaffordable and unavailable) and specialized technicians (also unaffordable and unavailable) in order to run.