It should be no surprise that soldiers in Iraq are less than impressed by the police blotter coverage of what's happening in Iraq. ABC News has a good article on the subject. What surprised me most was how little news many of the soldiers get -- and they get it late.

Another thing of note is the quality of the new Stryker vehicle.

The perspective of the soldiers doesn't begin or end with the gun battles. When one of the new Stryker vehicles was hit by a road-side bomb and burned, critics of the vehicle went on the attack.

The soldiers there saw if differently. They saw a 20-ton Stryker bounce in the air and felt the heat and concussion of the explosion more than a football field away. Rushing to the aid of those inside, they were stunned. All jumped out of the Stryker. There was one minor injury. "I thought they were all dead," one soldier told me. "It was a big one [bomb.]" There has been one other similar incident with a Stryker. It didn't catch fire, was repaired and is now back in the war. No one in a Stryker has been killed in combat.

Some physics expert can determine the force required in an explosion to lift a 20-ton vehicle off the ground, but I'm guessing the number is quite large.