BAGHDAD -- Due to my myriad natural flaws, I'm all over the place, and so it goes for my Iraq writing. By popular demand, I'll start aggregating links here, and so here's the latest: me and Brigadier General Saleh, chief cop of western Baghdad, for Tapped; scenes from an Iraqi Police checkpoint, for IraqSlogger (a great, great website for all things Iraq, BTW); an appreciation of a particularly awesome soldier, and his fellows, for the Guardian's Comment Is Free; and the question of the hour -- Is Our Surges Working? -- for Talking Points Memo, which has kindly lent me space as it takes a slight breather from pwning the rest of the media.

As for now, looks like I'll be in the Green Zone for at least another 24 hours as I wait to get to Ramadi. I'll be using the downtime to get over a rather nasty cold that's decided to pick a particularly inconvenient moment to afflict me. Helping me in this regard is Orhan Pamuk's excellent My Name Is Red (thanks to Kriston).

One final thing, of which Sue from Rock, Star and Tedium has reminded me. Soldiers at Camp Liberty are crazy about MySpace. Not just for keeping in touch with people back home, but with each other. At the computer center in the MWR tent, there are color printouts advertising soldier's MySpace accounts, saying things like "Check out Iraq SportsCenter on MySpace! Don't be afraid to be friends!" Beats going up to people IRL, I suppose. It appears good old fashioned internet anomie can survive even the most aggressively social environments.