Shorter Tom Friedman: "We can still win in Iraq because the Iraqi lurkers support us in email".

More: To be more exact, Friedman goes on for a while about the "silent majority" of Iraqi who agree with American goals and aims. As it happens, those folks are not all silent. Take, for instance, Riverbend, the nom-de-blog of a young Iraqi woman from Baghdad who used to be a computer programmer, but isn't any longer because now that we've started improving her life, women are unemployable there. Here's a little of what she has to say about the country she's living in, on a blog whose title, "Baghdad Burning", is once again literal fact:

If the situation weren't so frightening, it would almost be amusing to see Al-Hakeem and Bahr Ul Iloom describe Al-Sadr as an 'extremist' and a 'threat'. Muqtada Al-Sadr is no better and no worse than several extremists we have sitting on the Governing Council. He's just as willing to ingratiate himself to Bremer as Al-Hakeem and Bahr Ul Iloom. The only difference is that he wasn't given the opportunity, so now he's a revolutionary. Apparently, someone didn't give Bremer the memo about how when you pander to one extremist, you have to pander to them all. Hearing Abdul Aziz Al-Hakeem and Bahr Ul Iloom claim that Al-Sadr is a threat to security and stability brings about visions of the teapot and the kettle…

Then Bremer makes an appearance on tv and says that armed militias will *not* be a part of the New Iraq… where has that declaration been the last 12 months while Badir's Brigade has been wreaking havoc all over the country? Why not just solve the problem of Al-Sadr's armed militia by having them join the police force and army, like the Bayshmarga and Badir's Brigade?! Al-Sadr's militia is old news. No one was bothering them while they were terrorizing civilians in the south. They wore badges, carried Klashnikovs and roamed the streets freely… now that they've become a threat to the 'Coalition', they suddenly become 'terrorists' and 'agitators'. ...

Over the last three days, over 150 Iraqis have been killed by troops all over Iraq and it's maddening. At times I feel like a caged animal- there's so much frustration and anger. The only people still raving about 'liberation' are the Iraqis affiliated with the Governing Council and the Puppets, and even they are getting impatient with the mess.

Our foreign minister Hoshyar Zibari was being interviewed by some British journalist yesterday, making excuses for Tony Blair and commending him on the war. At one point someone asked him about the current situation in Iraq. He mumbled something about how there were 'problems' but it wasn't a big deal because Iraq was 'stable'… what Iraq is he living in?

And as I blog this, all the mosques, Sunni and Shi’a alike, are calling for Jihad...

She also describes secondhand reports from Faluja that already sound like accounts of a medieval siege -- she says we've bombed the hospital, and bodies are rotting in the street. A good end to that is hard to imagine...

Yet more: Well, so much for that metaphor. The siege has already been broken, by convoys of Iraqi civilians, as the American forces were unwilling to create another highway of death to block their entrance...