A lot of people say they want to know what's going on in Iraq. I'm not convinced some of them do. I think a lot of people (the loud ones, mainly) want to know just enough to support their pre-existing view of the Bush administration. That which does not must be ignored or written off as propaganda or bad/biased reporting.
There are times I think the best way to know what's going on — assuming you really do — is to ignore all the pundits. Ignore the guys on the left who tell you what you should think. Ignore the folks on the right who tell you what you should think. Even — gasp, choke — ignore me. Just look at official documents and give them whatever weight common logic tells you they're worth.
A few days ago, the Department of Defense issued a 63-page report on how things are going in Iraq. I think it's reasonable to assume that the Pentagon is not going to make things sound worse than they are over there. If anything, they will err on the side of spinning events to make things look rosier.
Here is a link to an Adobe PDF of the report. I just went through the whole thing — and while I won't claim I understood every nuance and detail, large chunks of it are perfectly clear…and most of them are not encouraging. Civilian deaths are increasing and spreading over a wider area. Increasingly, citizens are giving their support to insurgent and militia groups that are providing security where the national police forces have failed, and homelessness and displacement have taken a sharp rise. Economic conditions are bad and confidence is low. And this is not some critic of the Bush administration saying all this. This is the Pentagon.
But like I said: Don't listen to me. Read it for yourself. And don't ignore the good news that's in there, either.