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Iraq is more than just exploding bodies, bloodthirsty zealots, and confused American soldiers. It’s also got spicy meat soups and raisin-juice, verdant rose bushes, and centuries of culture and tradition.

Even after the guards got caught stacking naked prisoners like a hairy, human-rights-violating cheerleading team in 2004, very little changed in the awful conditions at Abu Ghraib.

I’m a big fan of war. What can I say? I’m an asshole. I’m not so big on all the blood and guts and our boys dying over there but I do enjoy the comedic aspect of saying

Iraqis, after living for decades under an oppressive totalitarian regime in which one offhand remark could ensure a quick trip to the gallows, have mastered the art of the whispered political riff.

Do you know that thing Denzel Washington said in Philadelphia, where he'd go, "I don't get it. Tell it to me like I'm a five-year-old." When he said it, he meant, "Cut the shit."

"Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" is a Western concept. In Iraq, it's more about the lack of these things. Nightclubs don't exist, sex is sacred and private, and you'd have a better chance seeing two people making out in the street than you would of...

In September 1987, Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, wanted a double, and I was lucky enough to look like him.

For years there has been a steady stream of people leaving Iraq. Our Iraqi buddy Isam Kalka tells us people make a pit stop in Jordan or Syria because it's close and the countries have a history with Iraq, but after that most people travel on elsewhere.

Mostafa Alshawi fled from Iraq to Sweden with his family when he was three. 20 years later he returned to his home country. He's a proud member of the Shia Islamic clan of the fishermen in Iraq, and in Sweden he is enrolled in the Police Academy.

Three Iraqi girls not in an Iraqi world.

THE GIRLS ISSUE SAVED MY LIFEThanks a million for The Girls Issue! 2006 was pretty shitty—I lost my job, got fucked over by untold boys (it was international fuckeries too—one from Sweden, one from L.A.

The infamous battle of the Baghdad airport took place in the first week of April 2003. It was the final battle of the "official" conquest of Iraq.