from New York Times--a student at Columbia Grad Sch Journalism

Every time I talked to someone at a party, in a taxi or at the store, the same chain of questions would follow after I said I was from Iraq. Some people gaped. Others sat silent for a second, then shook my hand differently. “Wow, so interesting,” they would say. “So what do you think of the whole situation? What went wrong over there?” Finally, the inevitable: “Do you think we should pull out?”