Back to Baghdad

Liftoff for Iraq on Saturday. and it's happening again -- a narrowing and sharpening of focus, a sense of normal things falling away, perspective shifting, a feeling of picking up speed on a trajectory that leads back to Baghdad and the war. Back to the war that has killed thousands -- Americans and Iraqis -- in a land where millions have just shown they are ready to run things by voting in the face of the terror that has hung over their country since Saddam Hussein was toppled. This election may not be the Berlin Wall coming down -- but it feels close.