Another dispatch from Michael Yon, here. Yon as we all know is one of the independent reporters, but there is also extraordinary news and comment to be had from the more established wirters. In particular John Burns from the NYT who talked to Hugh Hewitt earlier this weekend and outlined the dangers of a hasty withdrawal from Iraq:

My friend said to me, if the United Nations is correct in saying that 3,700 Iraqi civilians died in October, and that’s a morgue’s count. It may be an underestimate, we don’t know. But he said if it’s correct that 3,700 people died in October across Iraq, think about this. You take the American troops away in this situation, leaving Shiite death squads to move into Adamiya in force without any kind of protection, he said it won’t be 3,700 dead in a month, it’ll be 3,700 dead in the night in Adamiya. Now that may be an exaggeration, but it reflects the kind of fears that are quite widespread, amongst Sunnis in particular, but also to some extent amongst Shiites in Iraq, about the consequences of an American troop withdrawal.

The moral obligation to protect innocent lives - the one squandered in Rwanda and to some extent in the former Yugoslavia - is hardly ever the focus of the debate over Iraq. To me, it is one of the core pieces as Burns' example makes clear.