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It looks like this is going to turn into Part 39 of my Jamilgate series. Part 38 is here.

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Back from Baghdad
Michelle Malkin

My HotAir.com colleague Bryan Preston and I are back from Iraq. Thanks to Allah and Ian for holding down the fort at HA and thanks much to guest-bloggers Mary Katharine Ham, See-Dubya, and the Big Lizards for filling in here during my absence. Be sure to bookmark their blogs.

Our first Hot Air in Baghdad video report is here.

Bryan's first post-trip essay, a thorough assessment of "mistakes, fumbles and ways forward to win--and what victory actually looks like," is here. He's also got video stills of our encounters with shady operators on both sides of the sectarian divide while on patrol with U.S. troops.

My syndicated column today provides an overview of the counterinsurgency efforts we witnessed first-hand--and I'm posting the column below, illustrated with photos I took throughout the trip.

We'll report on our investigation of the Associated Press's media malpractice in an upcoming New York Post exclusive.

And we'll both be publishing much more over the next several days,  ...

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Assessing Iraq
Bryan Preston

Michelle and I spent four days patrolling the environs around Forward Operating Base Justice in north and west Baghdad last week. FOB Justice is near one functional neighborhood, Khadimiyah, one mostly recovered neighborhood, Al Salam, one dysfunctional neighborhood, Al Hurriyah, and an al Qaeda-influenced area the name of which I never learned.

FOB Justice sits in a mostly Shia area, but it is just across the Tigris from Adamiya, a Sunni area that produced pops of AK gunfire every night and, on a couple of occassions, we heard the sound of mortar fire coming from that direction. But the convoys we were on were never shot at, and our troops never fired a single shot, which by itself is significant considering the fact that we were in Baghdad and did drive and walk through some sketchy areas. Most people in the states don’t realize that most of Baghdad’s violence is confined to areas where Shia and Sunni mix. No one so much as threw a rock at us, and the troops were greeted in a friendly manner nearly everywhere they went. Only in Hurriyah did we see overt hostility, but it never went beyond the sly insult stage.

This isn’t to say that everyone in Iraq loves US troops or that FOB Justice’s area of operation is Disneyland. Troops from FOB Justice frequently run across Haifa Street (including the trip bringing us back from the International Zone, hours after a fierce fight had taken place there) and troops from Justice have unfortunately been killed in combat or by IEDs; last fall a colonel was killed by one of the sophisticated Iranian-made IEDs. IEDs are a constant threat across most of Iraq. We ran across Mahdi Army militia fighters a couple of times on one patrol (and I have video); their intent was to check up on the Americans while staying far enough away to avoid a clash.  ...

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Jules links here. (Check out his new digs!)

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Confederate Yankee has an excellent related post here, including some new questions for al-AP.

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Curt takes note here.

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Audio: Michelle talks Iraq with Laura Ingraham
Allahpundit

The first major media appearance by the boss today related to her trip.

Update: INDC Bill’s still on the ground in Fallujah and snapping pics aplenty. Here’s what remains of the “Valentine’s Day Massacre” in that city. You’ll have to follow the link for details.

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Part 39 of a series. Part 40