Now, talk shows in Baghdad tend to attract the same kind of opinionated callers as shows in the United States, and this one was on Baghdadiya TV, one of the stations more critical of the government (and home of shoe-throwing reporter Muntather al-Zeidi). Still, these were the sounds of confidence draining from the security bubble of the last several months.

More than 150 Iraqis have died and at least as many have been injured in two separate bombings Thursday and this afternoon. The targets have been Shiite Muslims, including pilgrims coming from Iran yesterday and worshipers on their way to a Shiite shrine in Baghdad today. It’s the kind of violence that struck over and over from mid-2003 until Shiites started fighting back in horrific street attacks and kidnappings in 2006.

U.S. officials stress that the overall numbers of attacks are still down from 2003 levels. So far 14 U.S. soldiers have died this month, up from 9 in March and lower than the 17 in February, according to the Website icasualties.org. The site reports that civilian deaths are running about the usual rate of between 200 to 300. (An Associated Press story yesterday reported a new Iraqi tally showing nearly 90,000 killed since the start of 2005)

But U.S. commanders have expressed frustration at not being able to stop the “spectacular” attacks we’ve been seeing lately. The attacks–two coordinated in a usually secured location today, six in one morning on April 6–also show a degree of organization that belies claims that Al insurgents are desperate or on the run. In fact, they appear to be able to strike some of the city’s most patrolled areas.

The bombs have shaken the city and threaten the tortuously slow political reconciliation that most Iraqis and Americans agree is needed to bring real stability and to keep the country from splintering into chaos again. People are calling for action and resorting to old, usually ethnic, animosities. Some of what could happen next if things turn for the worse:

• The bombings could scuttle plans for a conference in the coming weeks that would include Sunni Baathists interested in recognizing the Shiite-led government. Shortly after the bombing today, influential Shiite cleric Sadr al-Din al-Qubanchi blamed Baathists for the attacks and warned politicians that, “winning over 1,000 Baathists will lose you 100,000 of the people's votes.”
• Iraqis who fled the violence for other countries, including badly needed doctors, engineers and civil servants, will be less likely to return.
• The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which won recent local elections and touts security gains, could lose the people’s trust and even face parliamentary attempts to unseat it–which would likely lead to months of leaderless stagnation. Maliki quickly called for an investigation into security breaches at the bombings Friday.
• Iraqis could lose confidence in the fledgling security forces or the Americans training them, which would reduce their desire to risk providing all-important intelligence on threats.
• Worst of all, and so far not occurring, government forces or rogue Shiite militias could try to exact the kind of street vengeance that made 2006-7 so horrendous and required the American troop surge just to get things to where they are now. But now, the U.S. is trying to withdraw troops. That kind of violence could even cause the splintering or collapse of some of the new security forces.

   
On the other hand, this could end up being a test the new Iraqi security forces are up to handling. Today’s bombing was in the Kazimiya district of Baghdad. I was there a couple times last week and was struck by two things. First, it’s one of the cleanest, most pleasant areas of the city. Large homes line the banks of the Tigris River and the sumptuous gold dome of the shrine floats above the busy shops and mosques like a crown.

Second, the security at the checkpoints controlling all the entrances was lax. Iraqi troops waved an electronic wand by passing cars but let them go one after another with little more than that by way of inspection. After the bombing, NEWSWEEK talked to an employee at the shrine who said today’s attack was near the site of a smaller bombing last week and insisted the police are not doing their jobs. Despite the fact that attacks are still frequent, there’s a complacency that may be creating an opening for insurgents. Friday, Abdel Mehdi al-Karbalai, a prominent Karbala cleric, warned that the government has to end its infighting and keep the security forces on the alert. Local media reported that Maliki suspended top security officials in Kazimiya.

People in predominantly Shiite Kazimiya are conservative merchants, not looking for a fight and craving stability. I remember being there after a large bombing scarred a holy day in March, 2004. Residents gathered in an impromptu meeting and some called for indiscriminant blood against Sunnis until one man calmed them with reminders that they must follow their clerics, mainly Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and he was urging patience. Most of Baghdad doesn’t have the cool tempers they do in Kazimiya, where people have so much to lose if things turn to mayhem. The city’s patience is being put to the test.

With Saad al-Izzi and Hussam Ali.

Not all Iraqis want to let the shoe thrower off the hook and some even agree with the harsh three-year jail sentence Muntadhar al-Zeidi received today from an Iraqi court.

Granted, it's a minority. Zeidi was lauded in street demonstrations in Baghdad and other capitals when the 30-year-old television reporter zinged his two shoes past a ducking President George W. Bush in a press conference here Dec. 14. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, at a lectern next to Bush, vainly tried to block the flying leather. Iraqi security wrestled and pummeled Zeidi and whisked him off to jail.

Zeidi later told the court that he couldn't bear listening to Bush claim success in Iraq while all the reporter could think of was the monumental human loss and suffering of the last six years. He said he viewed Bush as an occupier. Iraqis and other Arabs have hailed him as a national hero. It's probably the majority view, but there's a nuance, too.

Many think he broke an important Middle Eastern and especially Iraqi code that requires hospitality for even reviled guests. It's a little like American Southern hospitality--if someone is in your house, you treat them well as a sign of your own good upbringing and honor. "[Bush] was a guest and a guest should be respected and not humiliated," said a construction worker who wanted to be identified just by his first name, Fawad. "It's our duty to respect him, not because we love Americans but because we love our country. In our tradition as Arabs, even if you see your enemy at a meeting you should greet your enemy as a sign of respect for that meeting."

Zeidi's lawyers made a compelling argument that the sentence was too stiff. They said he should not have been charged under the law against attacks on a foreign leader but rather a lesser crime of insulting a foreign leader.

"Muntadhar would not have dared to throw his shoe at President Bush if Saddam had been receiving Bush, not al-Maliki," said Sabah Shakir Majhool, a university student. "The three years is a fair sentence for his bad behavior." Another man, an engineer, noted that if he had a complaint about Bush, Zeidi could have used his platform as a journalist to express it.

Others may feel more like Ahmed Saad, a 37-year-old grocer who expressed the same anger as Zeidi about the American-wrought chaos of the recent years. "They should honor him instead of punishing him," he said. "He has done what every Iraqi should have done against the criminal Bush, who destroyed the country and caused the killing of young people and children." Or like mechanic Abdullah Mustafa who said, "It's not fair to put a good guy who loves his country and people in prison just because he has done what all Iraqis wish to do. Zeidi's protest did give voice to Iraqis who felt ignored."

Zeidi has already spent three months in jail and, according to family members, has been badly beaten. Even with good behavior, he might not get out for about two years. Elections are scheduled for early next year. Perhaps the Iraqi leadership could show the same nuance as the people have and commute his sentence before then.

--With Hussam Ali, Saad al-Izzi and Salih Mehdi in Baghdad.

A soon-to-be released book by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward reportedly confirms the most open secret in Baghdad's Green Zone – that you never know who's listening on your phone. The book, "The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008," quotes one source saying the Americans hear "everything" Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki says. The scoop was heard in Baghdad and might complicate the oft-contentious relations between the two ostensibly allied governments. In his bright salon living room where he spent his Friday weekend time, government spokesman Ali Dabbagh fielded calls about the report, eying an Arabic translation of an Agence France-Presse version. "Definitely the Prime Minister will be upset. All the government will be upset" if it turns out to be true, Dabbagh said. He vowed that Iraqis would raise the allegation with their American counterparts. At the White House, spokeswoman Dana Perino declined to comment on the report.

The Iraqi government might be upset, but no one will be too shocked. Reports surfaced in January, 2007, that U.S. agencies were listening in on Maliki. The Green Zone is probably among the most thoroughly spied-upon pieces of turf on the planet. Tales circulate of phone transcripts of top Iraqis passed among embassies. Drones frequently buzz like flying lawn mowers overhead. It's reputed that U.S. government employees' calls are monitored and people can be disciplined for speaking the details about top officials' movements. This means the Americans think insurgents could have the equipment needed for listening in on mobile connections, carried by local phone companies. It can make it tough for embassy press aides, who have to invite reporters to press conferences without naming the speakers.

They use phrases like "senior U.S. official" when a cabinet secretary has come from Washington. Reporters have to gamble on whether showing up will get them a meeting with a top State Department power or someone on a junket from the Department of Commerce.

There's also the old-fashioned in-person spying. I know of one operative from Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army who was arrested by U.S. troops at his job in a Green Zone police station. People worry that Mahdi Army spotters could be phoning in the locations of rocket strikes to provide better aim to the attackers. U.S. advisers assigned to Iraqi ministers are sometimes suspected of reporting back to American commanders.

And, yes, the phones are highly suspect. Dabbagh acknowledge that Iraqis often joke about who might be listening to them chat. They are especially suspicious of the mobile phones that coalition officials have handed out since early in the war. They carry the U.S. country code and a 914 area code. Dabbagh would not say whether Iraqis also spy on U.S. officials but he said spying is not a two-way street. "It is our right if we want to do it," he said. "As long as there's no problem with international law, for our national security we have to do it. But the U.S. should not do it in Iraq." Surely, they're both doing it.

By Lennox Samuels 

 By Lennox Samuels

The young man in the gauzy yellow jumpsuit sits motionless in a reclining chair at the edge of the ward, his knees drawn up in a near-fetal position. His face is puffy from his wounds and he exhibits the stillness of someone who is blind. Indeed, the thick white bandage over his eyes seems to confirm that he is. But a second look takes in a light-brown leather strap that tethers him to the chair, and an American military officer confirms that he is a detainee. There’s nothing wrong with his eyes. The oversized bandage is there to make sure he won’t be able to identify anyone after he is released.

Apprehended because of his actions fighting Coalition forces in Iraq (Only captured or suspected insurgents face such restrictions), the man is a patient at the U.S. Air Force Theater Hospital at Balad Air Base. He is an emblem of the facility’s policy of treating anyone, friend or foe, who arrives there needing medical help. The care is world-class at the hospital, which is renowned for its trauma treatment and the skill of its doctors. "For us, if you’re a military physician and come to Iraq and practice medicine, this is the Super Bowl,” says Colonel Patrick R. Storms, commander of the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Group and the hospital’s boss. A soldier brought to Balad, however badly injured, has a 99 percent chance of surviving. The one percent who die essentially are beyond saving because they have suffered extreme traumas such as loss of brain substance. The survival rate for Iraqi patients is 91 percent; they don't do quite as well as the Americans because they lack the soldiers' protective gear and are unable to heal as quickly since their bodies are often not as well nourished.

Saving lives is a reversal of roles in the building, which had a far more sinister function during the Saddam Hussein regime. “There used to be torture chambers in the basement, which boggled my mind,” Storms says. “Now the place looks a lot like a hospital. We’ve kind of lost that MASH feel.” Like the surgical hospital in the classic TV medical drama, the Air Force facility used to be housed in tents. Now it is in a 63,000-square-foot building outfitted with an overhead mortar protection field – a wise addition in this area, 42 miles north of Baghdad, where Iraqi militants regularly fire rockets and mortar onto the sprawling base. The patients, about half of whom are Iraqi and half American, are in the hands of a staff of 380, among them 17 surgeons. Not surprisingly in a war zone, the hospital’s priorities are to save lives and clear beds. American patients stay a little more than a day, on average. “It is not unusual for someone to be in Walter Reed within 72 hours of his injury,” says Storms, referring to the Army medical center in Washington. Iraqis typically are discharged after about six days.

Many hospitals in the United States treat perhaps three or four trauma patients a month. Balad handles 246 monthly, with 150 evaluated for traumatic brain injuries, from admissions totaling 500. “Traumatic brain injuries are the signature injury of this war,” Storms says. With suicide vests and IEDS now the favorite weapons of Iraq’s insurgents, he and his team are seeing more and more patients with a combination of blast and burn injuries. “There’s no parallel stateside,” he says. “We’re talking about blast, burns, penetrating injuries.” Among the worst cases he’s seen is one in which 23 car bombing victims were brought in; 22 had life-threatening injuries. Storms says 8 to 12 percent of admissions are children. “The injuries have been horrific, devastating. Monstrous stuff, like some sniper shooting a child through a window just because they can.” Further, he says, while a doctor in the U.S. might remove one or two eyes in his career, Balad physicians extract about 70 damaged eyes in each 120-day rotation. Reservists Lt. Colonel Peter Sorini and Lt. Colonel Jim Budny are among the doctors on the current rotation. Both are struck by the severity of the trauma cases. In the U.S., trauma injuries tend to be related to events like car accidents. “It’s the depth and breadth of the injuries you see here that’s different from back home. I don’t think I saw a penetrating wound to the head in Montana in 10 days. Here you see them every day,” says Sorini, of Butte. “The big question to me is what kind of person would do this to another person,” adds Budny, of Buffalo, N.Y. “There’s no limit to their cruelty.” On a light day, surgeons at the Balad hospital log a total of around 20 hours in the operating room. A heavy day pushes that number to 80 hours. Storms says he has jammed as many as 21 patients into the emergency room at the same time, in “a ballet of chaos.” Even with that many people, he strives to keep the place clean, making sure no blood or drip accumulates on the floor “so the next casualty coming in has no idea there were casualties before. That’s good for morale. “

The hospital was completed last July, with the medical staff working through construction. “We didn’t say 'stop the battle,'” says Storms, a doctor of gastroenterology and aerospace medicine. The hospital is known for neurosurgery; treating head and neck as well as ear, nose and throat cases; and for oral and face reconstruction. It also handles general surgery, internal medicine and a range of other maladies. But it is best know for its trauma work. Most trauma patients arrive by helicopter and are on an operating table within 30 minutes. Wounded troops are rushed from the landing pad to the OR, passing along “Heroes Highway” through a tent whose ceiling is a large American flag. “They’re on their backs and they look up and see the flag and know they’re in good hands,” Storms explains.

In the intensive care unit, a GI sleeps in a bed, recovering from a gunshot wound to the chest. An Iraqi man in his 30s is in isolation, injured in his stomach and arm by an IED. A one-year-old Iraqi boy is receiving a skin graft, his donor arm still attached to his face. He bit into an electrical cord and was grievously injured. Capt. Brian Caldwell, of the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, lies in a bed nearby, awake but slightly groggy. He had been walking at Forward Operating Base Warhorse when an IED exploded. “They threw me in a vehicle and brought me here,” he says. “All I remember is reading the word ‘Phillips’ – on some kind of CAT Scan.” Caldwell appears to have been lucky. He is being evaluated for a concussion and depending on how he responds, will be sent either to Germany for further treatment or back to his unit in Iraq.

Down the ward from Caldwell, a few curtained partitions over, the Iraqi detainee doesn’t stir. People walk to and fro, paying him little attention. “Insurgents flow through from time to time,” says Captain Brian Caruthers, the hospital’s executive officer. “It’s great to patch them up. They’re actually vital, in a way, because we get a lot of information from them that helps the war effort.” Just so they don’t expect to see their surroundings, or anyone in them.

These three charts provided to NEWSWEEK by the military last week give a rough idea of how the violence in Iraq today compares to other times during the war. The military still does not attach figures to the charts but it is more forthcoming with comprehensive trends--released in close-to-real-time--than it used to be.

This chart shows that weekly attacks are in a low, nearly four-month plateau with fewer than 600 attacks of all kinds across the country per week. Attacks haven't been down at those levels for a sustained period since about spring 2005 (and they surpassed 1,500 attacks a week back in June of last year), according to the military's information.

This chart shows violent civilian deaths down in January to just above 500 a month, the lowest figure in about two years:

The third shows Iraqi security forces and U.S. military deaths per month--with an uptick for U.S. deaths in January while Iraqi deaths dropped:

...

I rode a 4-wheeled version on a short trip with the Army. As it slowed to pick me up I felt like a small two-story building was lumbering up beside me. Its base sits high--maybe four feet--off the ground and the cabin is crowned on top by a gun turret surrounded by netting and bullet-proof glass. A heavy hydraulic ramp groaned open from the back and I made my way up five metal steps, the ramp closing behind me with a loud clap. The officer hosting me said his units don't use the trucks when riding inside Iraqi neighborhoods in his area because they're just too big. Streets aren't even that narrow in his part of the capital but they're usually lined with parked cars and electrical wires that sometimes get caught on Humvee antennae.

Once inside, I was surprised by the relative roominess. As wide as Humvees look from the outside, the interior is somehow chopped up by all the equipment and the standing room for the gunner. That barely leaves room for four seats at the corners (including one for the driver) where there's little space for your legs. The MRAP had two seats up front and four in back, which faced inward and left ample legroom across the aisle. The gunner has his own metal step to steady him in the turret.

I'm always puzzled by the user-unfriendly aspects of military vehicles and the dangers they pose before any battle is ever joined. Whether they're Humvees, Strykers or tanks, they seem filled with exposed steel edges, unpadded walls and supports. Maybe the lack of padding reduces the fire risk. The back of the big gun in an Abrams tank can crush your leg when it rises and falls if you're not sitting just right in back. Similarly, the MRAP's interior came with considerable risks, which the soldiers inside promptly explained. Seatbelts were a must, I was told. Otherwise, a normal bump could send you a couple feet in the air, slamming your (albeit helmeted) head into the thin padding of the armor ceiling. I noticed that all the seats were mounted on complicated systems of pulleys and thick nylon ropes. A soldier warned me to keep my feet away from a couple barely perceptible ridges across the passenger area floor. He wasn't sure what they did but had been warned they absorb shock and "can break your leg."

The stress, of course, is entirely on function. The interior is mostly metal in desert beige. There were boxes of ammunition for the gunner and an RPG launcher strapped against a wall. Along with written instructions on the side of the launch tube was an outline of a man with it mounted on his shoulder and the advice, "Fire like this." There was enough room for a round drinks cooler (like the kind they dump on winning football coaches) next to the driver and a leather football was pinned between a seat and the wall. They seemed like the only things inside that wouldn't maim someone who slammed against them in a wreck.

Downplaying Expectations? Ambassador Crocker, speaking to Baghdad store owners this past weekend, says just about everyone is unhappy with work on the ‘benchmarks’.

In the marble-lined palace housing most of the U.S. Embassy staff on Tuesday, around a table with the coffee, bottled water and cookies offered at these briefings, it was unclear exactly why Crocker wanted to hold the briefing, which was scheduled a few days ago. He gave no opening statement before throwing it open to questions that he answered in characteristic modesty--noting when he had doubts or didn't have answers. He likely wants to downplay the emphasis and expectations around the September report. Crocker said that even if the Iraqi government had tackled all the benchmark issues, the country could still be headed in the wrong direction. And even if it tackles none of them, but leaders are talking, bonding and building their capacity for peaceful politics, Iraq could be on the right track.