Leaving Iraq

Flickr/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/3082972774/">US Army</a>.

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If you don’t follow the Boston Globe‘s Big Picture blog, you should. The blog compiles the best wire photos on given subjects into powerful, evocative photo essays, with big, high-quality images. Every month, you can see the latest scenes from the Afghanistan war, for example.

Last week, the Big Picture published a series of recent photos from Iraq—the foreground fight that has moved to the background of the media’s consciousness. Many of the images are striking, but I was particularly drawn to a relatively peaceful shot (by Getty’s Ahmad al-Rubaye) of acres and acres of military vehicles, sitting idle in Baghdad’s Camp Victory. As the photo’s caption notes, all of those vehicles have to be either “taken home, sent to Afghanistan, or destroyed, two months ahead of a deadline that will serve as a precursor for a complete US military pullout from Iraq.”

In 2007, Mother Jones devoted an issue to how, exactly, the US could get out of Iraq. The whole package is here; but of particular interest is this graphic on what it takes to get a tank unit home from Iraq and this summary of what sorts of stuff we’re going to leave behind when we go. Even when combat troops “leave,” there will still be a sizeable American contingent left behind—the beginning of what could end up being a permanent presence

So while today’s news focuses on Wikileaks’ Afghanistan documents, please remember that there’s still a lot we have to work out with the other war we’re fighting, too—even if John McCain says the war’s “already won.”

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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