I've been getting emails from a cousin serving with the US military in Baghdad. Apparently the heat is really tough to deal with - especially with the uniforms and equipment made necessary by the danger of the situation.

I can tell you that emails from Baghdad certainly make you think differenly about the constant spew of news headlines from the region.

I suspect this is another sign that the original war plan (which imagined an almost-intact Iraqi government and military smoothly taking over after the US military knocked out the elite loyal units) has gone terribly wrong.

We were supposed to be out of there before things got hot . . . well, except for a few guys to guard the Halliburton offices.

Right. And none of those soldiers had any desert training in, say, Arizona, where summer temperatures reach 120 from June through August. Or Texas, where the heat index reaches equally sweltering temperatures.

And didn't the original war plan called for a comfortable, sunny 80 degrees for the entire rebuilding process? Man that war plan is screwed (what site is that plan published on again? I haven't finished read all of it yet).

anon: no, some of them didn't. And even in Twentynine Palms, the temperature doesn't reach 140 on the flightline like it does in Iraq.