AUSTIN BAY’S LATEST COLUMN is from Baghdad:

I served here as a soldier, and returning as a writer in part explains the change in perspective. This trip my job is assessment and analysis, not action. Even with a fast-paced itinerary that takes us to Fallujah, Tal Afar and Kirkuk, there is more time to reflect.

Today, the summer heat is just as hard as it was a year ago, the sand haze in the air just as thick. But the Baghdad of June 2005 is not the Baghdad I left in September 2004.

Read the whole thing.