Back to Iraq

Everyone else is linking to it, but what the hell. It's that good. Michael J. Totten's joy ride to Kurdistan continues. Hit his tip jar along the way.

The whole thing was just weird. I don't quite know how to convey how surreal it is to leave a country that maybe, just maybe, might join the European Union and enter a country that is a poster-child for wrenching war-torn catastrophe and have everything around me dramatically improve all at once. But that's how it goes these days when you cross into Iraq from Turkey. Even though Sean had never been there before, he, like me, breathed a sigh of relief at our arrival in a tranquil place at peace with itself.