Swiftboat this.

As the years in Iraq have worn on, with no headway made by our leaders we elected in 2006 towards ending the debacle, while I've tried to keep my little blog centered around the war, even I grow weary. I used to do a near daily post of 'The Toll' which was a count of the US troops killed in combat. Aside from the number in the thousands that few in congress seemingly pay any attention to, the fallen have been treated shamelessly by the administration. No one firmly grounded in reality believes that the DoD accounting of the dead is an accurate number. The news accounts from the families here in the states of their loved ones passings conflict too often with the 'official' tolls. How long this has been a practice, I do not know. The same is true for the civilian death toll, that I believe the 1 million-plus number more accurately reflects is no doubt still not a true accounting due to the Muslim burial practices, and the militias who have seemed to catch on to the fact that if executed/tortured bodies turn up in any quantity in the streets of any given village that no doubt the military will come in to conduct their raids. Hence is what I believe the reason behind the bodies that we hear about being found buried under buildings and homes, when we're permitted to hear of such truths.

When the troops themselves are brave enough to speak out about what they have witnessed, I believe it's a call for most anyone who does what I do to help their voices be heard. While certainly the Washington Post has an impressive number of readers -- I assume -- I myself know how many of the people around me never read anything more than the local paper, and often that is limited to the sports and entertainment sections.

So let me share with you here some of the more glaring, yet really not 'new' revelations of a unit that is 14 months into a tour of duty in Baghdad...

Starting with the quote that is also the article's title:

'I Don't Think This Place Is Worth Another Soldier's Life'

"I hate this road," someone says over the radio.

Barriers in Sadiyah are daubed with graffiti about an Iraqi National Police brigade that used to patrol the area and the Iraqi army brigade that replaced it. U.S. soldiers and residents said the police were complicit in Shiite attacks on Sunnis.
Barriers in Sadiyah are daubed with graffiti about an Iraqi National Police brigade that used to patrol the area and the Iraqi army brigade that replaced it. U.S. soldiers and residents said the police were complicit in Shiite attacks on Sunnis.

They stop, look around. The streets of Sadiyah are deserted again. To the right, power lines slump down into the dirt. To the left, what was a soccer field is now a pasture of trash, combusting and smoking in the sun. Packs of skinny wild dogs trot past walls painted with slogans of sectarian hate.

A bomb crater blocks one lane, so they cross to the other side, where houses are blackened by fire, shops crumbled into bricks. The remains of a car bomb serve as hideous public art. Sgt. Victor Alarcon's Humvee rolls into a vast pool of knee-high brown sewage water -- the soldiers call it Lake Havasu, after the Arizona spring-break party spot -- that seeps in the doors of the vehicle and wets his boots.

"When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street," Alarcon said this week. "The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks."

Many bombs, sectarian killings, and families fleeing to any nation that would have them ago. It's been during this unit's last 14 months that our dear internet friend and blogger River -- of Bagdad Burning -- and her family left for Syria, leaving their home, most of their belongings, family members, and friends behind.

But in one instance about two months ago, the American soldiers heard that the Wolf Brigade planned to help resettle more than 100 Shiite families in abandoned houses in the neighborhood. When platoon leader Lt. Brian Bifulco arrived on the scene, he noticed that "abandoned houses to them meant houses that had Sunnis in them."

"What we later found out is they weren't really moving anyone in, it was a cover for the INP to go in and evict what Sunni families were left there," recalled Bifulco, 23, a West Point graduate from Huntsville, Ala. "We showed up, and there were a bunch of Sunni families just wandering around the streets with their bags, taking up refuge in a couple Sunni mosques in the area."

As the militiamen and insurgents battled it out, the bodies mounted up. U.S. troops said that earlier this year it was common for them to find at least half a dozen corpses scattered on the pavement during their daily patrols.

Militiamen in BMWs rode around the neighborhood with megaphones, demanding that residents evacuate. Mortar rounds launched from nearby Bayaa, a Mahdi Army stronghold, began crashing down regularly in Sadiyah. Three mosques in the neighborhood were rigged with explosives and destroyed.

The national police erected checkpoints outside other mosques and prevented Sunnis from attending services. The U.S. soldiers began facing ever more sophisticated armor-piercing roadside bombs known as EFPs, short for explosively formed penetrators. Some of them were linked in arrays that blasted out as many as 18 heated copper slugs.

Over time, the neighborhood became a battleground that residents fled by the thousands. Hundreds of shops shut down, schools closed, and access to basic services such as electricity, fuel and food deteriorated. "The end state was people left. They felt unsafe," said Timmerman, the operations officer.

"We were so committed to them as a partner we couldn't see it for what it was. In retrospect, I've got to think it was a coordinated effort," Timmerman said. "To this day, I don't think we truly understand how infiltrated or complicit the national police are" with the militias.

Those of us following along at home have noted the infiltration of the national police by the militias that our troops here confirm, again. At this point one can only assume the administration simply doesn't care, because afterall, it is Bush's war on terror, along now with most of our congress.

"This is a dangerous place," said Capt. Lee Showman, 28, a senior officer in the battalion. "People are killed here every day, and you don't hear about it. People are kidnapped here every day, and you don't hear about it."

On Oct. 14, Washington Post special correspondent Salih Saif Aldin was killed while on assignment in Sadiyah.

Those who patrol the neighborhood every day say the fight has left them tired, bitter, wounded and confused. Many of their scars are on display, some no one can see. Sgt. 1st Class Todd Carlsrud has a long gash on the right side of his neck and carries a lump of shrapnel lodged against his spine that his doctors would not risk cutting out. Another sergeant felt the flaming pain of a bullet tearing through his cheek and learned the taste of his own warm blood. He was one of three soldiers that day to get shot in the head -- a fourth was hit in the biceps -- when his squad walked into a house and found two gunmen waiting.

"The closer we get to leaving, the more we worry about it," said Alarcon, 27, sitting at a plastic table with several other soldiers outside their outpost in Sadiyah. "Being here, you know that any second, any time of the day, your life could be over."

"Gone in a flash," said Sgt. Matthew Marino.

"We had two mechanics working in the motor pool get hit by mortars," Alarcon said. "You would have never thought." Both died.

Many of the soldiers from the battalion are on their second tour in Iraq. Three years ago, they were based in Tikrit, the home of Saddam Hussein, a city they entered expecting to fight a determined Sunni insurgency. By the end of their tour, with much of the violence contained, many of them felt optimistic about progress in Iraq.

"I honestly thought we were making a difference in Tikrit. Then we come back to a hellhole," Marino said. "That was a playground compared to Baghdad."

The American people don't fully realize what's going on, said Staff Sgt. Richard McClary, 27, a section leader from Buffalo.

"They just know back there what the higher-ups here tell them. But the higher-ups don't go anywhere, and actually they only go to the safe places, places with a little bit of gunfire," he said. "They don't ever [expletive] see what we see on the ground."

Hear that, John McCain. Congress. Katie Couric. Michelle Malkin. I know there are more, and I'm almost certain we'll be hearing from them.

I don't know how many of these brave young men today dared to tell the truth will make it home, but I'll be here -- fwiw -- to defend them against anyone who dares to question their honor, patriotism, or integrity.

Read the entire piece here.

-Diane