It's too long to post, but here's the URL to an article by Nir Rosen on the everyday security situation in Iraq.
URL: http://www.reason.com/hod/nr032604.shtml
He has his biases (Reason is a libertarian mag), but a lot of this is very interesting. Fwiw, he is an Arabic speaker who has lived in Iraq for the last straight year. And he writes well.
Michael