The Kurds in Control - in the current issue of the magazine - is a portrait of a region with no illusions about the future of Iraq.
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0601/feature1/index.html"But in the end, the essential Kurdish truth today is that they can't give up the dream of outright independence. After 14 years of self-rule, the Kurds can no longer imagine themselves as Iraqis. To travel through Kurdistan is to follow an intense national debate whose central issue is no longer the pros and cons of full, unambiguous separation from Iraq. It's how best to secure it. I came to think of it as a debate between Builders and Warriors."
This article, in its own understated way, puts the whole Bush Cabal Iraqi Mission rev 4.0: A Nation at Peace, to the lie. There is no Iraq. The civil war and the reconstitution of the region into its ethnic components is the reality on the ground.
If you can read the full article you should. It includes a chilling account of an encounter with american special forces - out of uniform and out of control, referred to locally as the 'Rambos'.
What are we doing? What have we done? Eventually the bill for all of our crimes will come due.