You say you wish the media would focus on the good things the military is doing - like building roads. Roads are used by the military (historically, the first roads were built for militaries) and they are anything but neutral services in the context of an occupation. An occupying army needs to have a high degree of mobility to make its patrols. Roads are used for this. Even the US interstate highway system was originally designed and built out by the Federal Government for getting armored vehicles quickly from one city to another.

You say the US Military is building schools. Perhaps you were not aware that Iraq, prior to 1990, had one of the highest standards of living in the entire Middle East. They were a "first world" nation, with universities and high technology and public schools. Shortly after the invasion in 2003, I remember hearing an interview with an Iraqi truck driver who had lost both of his daughters. They were each medical doctors. Now think about that - where else in the Middle East, outside of Israel or Lebanon, would you find a truck driver able to finance the MD education of two daughters? By the way, the interview with the truck driver was about the death of both daughters. If your husband is building schools in Iraq, I have to ask what happened to the school he is replacing. Perhaps it fell apart, but perhaps it was destroyed in a battle.

You'd like us to focus on what the military is able to tell you about what is going on there - admitting that some things must be kept secret to help protect your husband from "the enemy." Might your source of information therefore be just a bit tainted? Might you be hearing what you hear because the military wants to obscure the reality of daily patrols, house to house searches, streetside stripping of cars and clothes from human beings whose only 'crime' is being out in the street, or safely at home? Perhaps the 'good' stories you are hearing help your husband and you rationalize your participation in this occupation. Perhaps you need to believe this - but I do not.

When you wrote that the US Army in Iraq is working to "allow for women to have some rights, and so much more" I have to cringe. The Middle East is full of patriarchy (rule of men) but Iraq was one of the leading progressive countries in this regard. No, it was not perfect. Neither is the US. But the idea that an institution like the US army - which is heavily sexually segregated, misogynist, and has a worldwide history of fostering gang rapes and domestic abuse of women - could be the saviour of the women of Iraq? Pull the other leg - I don't want to walk in circles for the rest of my life. Besides that, you're conflating a Psyops public affairs theme from Afghanistan, not even appropriate to the programs going on in Iraq. Women there already had formal economic and legal equality with men.

Overall, your post - though I will assume it is in earnest - reminds me of a problem I often have with people who watch too much television about news events. I often hear people repeating things to me that they probably have not actually thought out for themselves. That is to say I feel sometimes like I have heard a person simply repeat to me what the TV told them this morning. The themes that you repeat in your post lead me to believe this has happened here. Someone told you that what we're doing is good, that what we're doing is not covered by the media, and that the world would support us if only it knew. Perhaps you were told these things by your husband, but I'd be willing to bet he heard them from his unit public affairs officer and the various media controlled by the DOD.

As a 'thought experiment,' I'd like you to try this: pretend that every thing your husband tells you he is doing in Iraq is being done by an Iraqi officer here in Washington State, backed up by a full armored division occupying Tacoma, Seattle, and Spokane - but few of the towns in between. See if this changes the way you feel about what you're hearing described, and post back what YOU think - and WHY it is a good idea - and why it cannot be done better by Iraqis for themselves, without US Army help.