Important Iraq assessment by free lance journalist Chris Albritton!

Bumps in the Road
BAGHDAD—The Americans have killed two Iraqi journalists inside of a week. One was killed Friday and I just heard news of the other. I know a lot about the first death, but at the request of his family, I can't publish much because his widow fears retribution for her husband having worked for a Western news organization. But he was killed with a single shot to the head by Americans in a passing convoy.

The second I don't know much about, as I just heard about it. Details haven't started coming in yet.

I think the Americans have gotten a lot more trigger-happy and twitchy after the campaign of car bombs and other violence that has gripped Iraq for the last, what? Five weeks? Six? I've lost track. I can't tell anymore what headlines from the Associated Press listing the number of dead are new bombings or just updated casualty figures from earlier in the day.

“We have a choice now,” said A., my gruff, scotch-drinking office manager, confidant and mentor in all things Iraqi. “We can be killed by Zarqawi or the Americans.”

Since returning, it feels like I'm listening to the same record I've been listening to for a year, only with the volume turned up. Donald Rumsfeld, the American Secretary of Defense, says U.S. is winning the war and that the media are focusing too much on bad news. I know this because the press releases from the American Forces Information Network tell me so:

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