Ground truth

"If, [two and a half] years in, you don't control the only road linking your military airport to your headquarters, you don't control much of anything"...

..."On the green plastic wall of a portable toilet at Baghdad military airport, I read the following graffiti, scrawled by a civilian contract employee: '14 months. $200,000. I'm out of here. [Expletive] you Iraq.' Beneath it was a response from the ranks: '12 months. $20,000. What the [expletive] is going on here?'.

In Baghdad, I Hear Echoes of Saigon in '67, Lewis Simons, Washington Post, 28 August