MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Later in the broadcast, the consumer financial protection bureau former Ohio Attorney General, Richard Cordray, has been nominated to head it. It'll be your turn to tell us what you think the agency should be doing and how you think it will affect your credit and financial life.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIBut first, it's a national capital with an identity crisis, a federal enclave where local officials are often run over roughshod by politicians at the national level. You could go so far as to say that Baghdad has a District of Columbia kind of problem on its hands, which is probably why Tim Craig was able to spot it so easily.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIHe took a break from his usual beat reporting about D.C. politics to spend the early part of the summer filing stories from the ground in Iraq. And way on the other side of the globe, he found himself face-to-face with another situation where local lawmakers were locking horns with the federal government, fighting for influence over everything from picking up trash to picking a police chief. Tim Craig joins us in studio. He's a reporter at The Washington Post. Tim, good to see you again.

MR. TIM CRAIGGood afternoon. How are you?

NNAMDII'm well. People in D.C. recognize your byline from stories about the rough and tumble world of the D.C. council. But earlier this summer, you found yourself on the other side of the globe for a reporting stint in Iraq and even though you were a world away from D.C. in Baghdad, you saw a lot of things taking place that reminded you of the District. At what point did you start to realize, from the perspective of local governors, that Baghdad was eerily similar to Washington D.C.?

CRAIGWell, pretty quickly you realize when you start looking at the Baghdad government and the national government and how they try to interlock and interplay with each other. I mean, it's a place really where there's -- local government's fairly new there. There were mayors and little councils under Saddam Hussein, but he kept fairly tight control over most distribution of services and security, of course. After the invasion, the American government set up something called provisional councils.

CRAIGIt's like 18 different regions where, you know, they elect the council, well, then the council elects a governor. And where it really becomes an issue is in a place like Baghdad, which, like the District, is the capital of Iraq and under the constitution, Baghdad's supposed to be its own unique capital.

CRAIGBut now, you have the situation where Baghdad has a mayor and the mayor fights with the elected provisional council. You also have a governor, who really isn't supposed to be have responsibility for the city of Baghdad, but he still tries to exert his influence. And, of course, you have the federal government under Prime Minister Maliki and because of the security constraints in -- security concerns, he's really trying to exert a lot of pressure to try to keep control of Baghdad. So now they're trying to work itself out and figure out who really is in charge.

NNAMDIOf course, one of the differences is population size. Baghdad has a population of about 5 million people, about one-quarter of the people in the entire nation are in Baghdad and I guess that does make a difference.

CRAIGYes, it's a sprawling, very large city. It almost, in some ways, feels as large as New York City. I don't think it's quite as large as New York, but when you're driving around, it's -- you can tell where the sprawl has happened and it's very -- it's sprawl-ish, but yet it's very tightly packed.

CRAIGMany neighborhoods have very tall apartment buildings and, you know, Sadr City, which is a suburb of Baghdad, but there's actually like 2 million people that live in a very small area and that makes providing services harder. Stuff like garbage collection is very difficult, where you could be driving down the street and you could see just piles and piles of garbage down alleyways. And actually, I put this on Twitter. I mean, my -- I used to work in Baltimore in 1999, 2000.

CRAIGAnd Baltimore's another place that I was at where some of the alleys I'd walk through in Baghdad reminded me of alleys I used to see in inner-city Baltimore, at least a decade ago. I don't know if they cleaned themselves up since then.

NNAMDIIt's my understanding that Baghdad has been designated as a unique federal city. What does that mean as far as who's in control of local matters?

CRAIGWell, that's something they have to try to figure out. Under -- how it's supposed to work is the mayor is supposed to be in charge of distribution of services right now. But Iraq has still very strong central government ministries, where under the federal government, the ministries are trying to take control over the dollars -- the reconstruction dollars.

CRAIGAnd that's really become the issue, is who gets to spend these reconstruction dollars, billions and billions of dollars that are flowing in the country to try to rebuild the city, not to mention the oil wealth that Iraq has and will continue to have for the foreseeable future.

NNAMDI800-433-8850 is our number here if you'd like to join the conversation, if you have questions or comments for Tim Craig about his reporting stint in Iraq. 800-433-8850. It seems that in Iraq, democratic government at the federal level is something that goes on in fits and starts. They're still smarting over a power-sharing dispute that kept parliament from being seated for months last year. What sense did you get for how efforts to establish effective local governments compare in terms of effectiveness?

CRAIGWell, I think it sort of depends on where in Iraq you're talking about. Some of the local governments seem like they're getting off fairly well and they're working pretty well, especially in, you know, if you go to Kurdistan, which is sort of an autonomous region.

CRAIGThey are far more along in doing this. Other parts are struggling under the continued need for services. Local people are frustrated. They don't have -- if you're in Baghdad every two hours, literally, the lights go out. Maybe three hours, but it's, you know, fairly frequent. The lights go out, the electricity supply is overwhelmed. Most people have generators if they can afford one. But if you don't afford one, you're…

NNAMDIHow long do the lights stay out?

CRAIGWell, we had generators -- we have generators, of course. Two Washington Post -- two really good generators so our lights would only stay off for two hours. But other places they could stay out for three or four hours before they come on, only to go out again.

CRAIGAnd it's, you know, it's 120 degrees, your air conditioning goes out, of course you're going to be upset about services. The same thing about drinkable water, you can't even -- you're not -- I, as an American, am not supposed to even brush my teeth with the water there. So you just -- it goes to show you how, you know, the health risks that associate with that problem.

NNAMDIWhat concerns do you have about the eventual drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq? You can call us at 800-433-8850. Send us a tweet at kojoshow or e-mail to kojo@wamu.org. Tim Craig, you start your story from the Zayouna, I think that's how it's pronounced, Zayouna neighborhood in Baghdad. Can you tell us a little bit about what life is like on the ground there and what people expect from their local government?

CRAIGWell, Zayouna, it's a part of Baghdad that's -- it was initially formed to be a neighborhood to house military commanders, even before Saddam Hussein. So a lot of army commanders and generals live there with their families and the houses are very nice. It almost reminds you of something you would see in the Arizona, New Mexico, like the desert homes, sandstone.

CRAIGIt's a very -- overall, Baghdad's a very dirty place just because there's sand everywhere because sand sticks to everything. But here, neighbors take pride in their yards. They have grass. They have fruit trees. They have lots of flowers. The problem becomes is when they move beyond their yards to the street.

NNAMDIWhen they walk out the door.

CRAIGWhen you move to the street now, especially since the collapse of the regime, there are pits of sewage in the street. There are big, big holes that literally have to be covered up by wood to prevent cars from falling into them. Garbage collection occurs, but it seems very sporadic. There's big pits of garbage in the street that -- sometimes you can see, like, goats and dairy cows eating the garbage on the side of the street. And people, you know, the people who live in this neighborhood are educated, even a lot of the women have went through college and university and they're desperate to have their neighborhood cleaned up, but they can't figure out who is responsible.

CRAIGIn some ways, the federal government is responsible. In some ways, the local government is responsible. And it's become a problem that they are -- they feel like they need something to happen immediately. And from the United States perspective, the level of frustration you hear from the average Iraqi about the lack of services still and about the slow pace of some reform is something that's really going to test the progress of this whole new democratic government going forward.

NNAMDIWhich causes me to raise another question with our listeners. What do you think American officials need to pay attention to most closely as they move the last remaining military units out of Iraq? 800-433-8850. What did people in those neighborhoods like Zayouna tell you about how local government functioned when Saddam Hussein was still in power?

CRAIGA lot of people, surprisingly enough, they still yearn for the Saddam Hussein...

NNAMDIThe good old days.

CRAIGThe good old days. Well, it's hard to tell, especially when you're only there for two months, you know, how much of that is real and how much of that is just, you know, fresh -- current frustration. But back then, local government really was pretty weak. Saddam Hussein had a lot of control over the distribution of services. But they claim the lights stayed on. They claim the trash got picked up. They claim that when they had a problem they could, you know, call their central ministry and they would have it fixed.

CRAIGNow, a lot of that structure is gone and they're trying to figure out, is the mayor responsible or is the central government responsible or is the governor responsible? And they look at the governor as kind of an American creation because they didn't have provisional governors before. This is something that the Americans created when they -- after the invasion to try to instill some sense of local government. And it's a big question, not just in Iraq, but all across the Middle East with -- now you have Egypt and, perhaps in the future, Libya, as they take on the more democratic feel, is something like local government going to work there?

CRAIGAnd how will it work there if it's successful? I think it's safe to assume that how we think of local government here is not necessarily going to work and carry on over there.

NNAMDIPut your headphones on because we're going to Dusty at -- who's at Bolling Air Force Base. Dusty, you're on the air.

DUSTYThank you, Kojo. I love listening to you. I am an Air Force wife. My husband is a colonel in the military and has done the deployment thing. I lived in Pakistan and India for about three years and what I see, what people resent in us, is we're trying to force our brand of happiness -- pursuit of happiness and democracy on those cultures. And, you know, we can only nation-build so much when you have a culture to deal with. Necessity is the mother of invention. If they want the clean water, they have the intelligence, they've had the training, they need to police their own country.

NNAMDIAnd you think we tend to be trying to -- some people would say impose, other people would say introduce, forms of government and administration with which those cultures are unfamiliar?

DUSTYNo, introducing doesn't require guns. Introducing is U.N. Security Councils having talks. That...

NNAMDISo you go with imposing?

DUSTYI'm sorry?

NNAMDISo you go with imposing?

DUSTYI don't want to go with imposing. I don't -- our mission changed so many times. My husband was a war planner for the original O.E.F. and then O.I.F and, you know, there was so much coming from the administration where they were undoing what the planners were working to do for political interests. And, you know, here we are in Iraq years later and they don't want us there. I don't believe that they need us there. I believe that once we leave, they're going to go, gosh, U.S. isn't here to do it anymore, we better.

NNAMDII'm glad you raised that question because I'd like to ask Tim Craig, among the officials or especially the local officials that you talk to in Baghdad, what was the sentiment about the American withdrawal in terms of their ability to provide the services that the residents of their city need?

CRAIGI think privately a lot of local officials and even national officials, they want the United States to continue to have some presence. They think they still need the help of not only the American military, but the American State Department. Now, the State Department, either way, will be there in large numbers after this year. The plans are for, I think, up to 17,000 State Department employees and contractors and a large security force protecting them, will remain in the country to continue trying to do some of this stuff with increasing services, helping them reform themselves, helping to, you know, ferret out some corruption issues that remain in Iraq.

CRAIGThe broader question, of course, is, are American troops needed on the ground, which is being debated. You know, having been there, you really see -- I don't want to sound cliché, but you really see both sides of this one issue. One hand, some days you're like it's hard to see what else the American troops could accomplish there. The other hand, I got to spend a lot of time with both Iraqi soldiers and the American soldiers training them at different training sites around the country.

CRAIGAnd these young Iraqi soldiers, many of whom you've got to remember were only 13 when the invasion happened so their knowledge now -- the younger people in the Iraqi army, their knowledge now of Saddam Hussein has become a pretty distant memory. Many have adopted many American -- like, they listen to iPods with American music. They have equipment that they don't even need, but they wear it anyways because they copied it off the American soldiers, like little goggles on their helmets that don't work. But the Americans…

NNAMDIIt's a style. It's a fashion statement.

CRAIGYeah, it's a fashion statement because the American's used to have night vision goggles. Well, we talked to a lot of them and they really very much believe that the United States needs to stay. They believe they need the help, they need the training. And when you see that, it makes you at least optimistic that maybe with continued American support and training, the Iraqi army at least can get itself in a structure that can help the overall country remain stable and stabilize going forward.

CRAIGIf that training does not continue, you got to wonder can the Iraqi army, which is already divided with ethnic splits and ethnic divisions, what happens if they no longer have the strong support and backing of the American army. But the question becomes is -- could America continue to provide training in some way without the American troops continuing to be a target by the insurgents?

CRAIGLast month when I was there, 15 American soldiers were killed. It was the highest in two years and the highest, if you just look at combat, in three years. I think it's going to be very hard next year going into a presidential election year if American troops are still there and being killed and dying in the streets. So this is all being worked out. Supposedly by the end of the summer or early fall, there's supposed to be some kind of agreement. Will troops remain? How many will remain and what the rolls will be?

NNAMDIGot to take a short break. When we come back, if you have already called, stay on the line. We'll try to get to your call. If you haven't called yet, the number is 800-433-8850. We're talking with Tim Craig. He's a reporter at the Washington Post who spent a significant part of this summer reporting from Iraq in Baghdad. 800-433-8850 or send us an e-mail to kojo@wamu.org. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back. Later in the broadcast, President Obama has nominated former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We're interested in your thoughts. You can call us. It will be your turn. Right now, we're talking to Tim Craig. He's a reporter at the Washington Post who spent much of the summer in Baghdad in Iraq covering that city.

NNAMDITim Craig, in the District of Columbia, members of Congress have tried to push the district around on everything, from education vouchers to needle exchanges to medical marijuana. On what issues did you find the most pressing conflicts between local and federal officials in Baghdad?

CRAIGWell, in Baghdad, the big issue is security and who gets what they call control of the security fouls. Right now, Prime Minister Maliki has tight control over the security, because he controls not only the army, but under the power-sharing agreement reached last year, you know, the interior forces, which is the police. When you think about the police, should report to the minister who was supposed to be a Sunni. Prime Minister Maliki is a Shiite. That still has not happened.

CRAIGThere's not been a consensus on the naming of an interior minister. So both the police and the multiple police units, as well as the army, report to him. And it's kind of -- when you think about it, Baghdad's a city of 5 million people, but there are an estimated 250,000 police officers and army units on the street. That is one thing that -- it took me a while to get used to just the overwhelming militarized feel of the place. You have checkpoints set up. Sometimes, you know, you can go through five checkpoints in two miles.

CRAIGAnd one of the reasons why is that the police and the army don't necessarily trust each other. And different units don't trust each other. So everyone feels like they got to replicate what the other one's doing to make sure that nothing is getting missed or -- they just don't trust each other. And, you know, some reason for the mistrust is there have been numerous incidents over the years and months and weeks where, you know, people -- terrorists slip through in a way that makes you wonder, you know. They really shouldn't have been able to slip through if the forces were doing an adequate job.

CRAIGBut it happens continually and they really got to work out the security situation. And that kind of hangs over everything else that's going on. In many ways, I found Baghdad to be even more dangerous than I thought it would be. I thought, you know, going into it, that things had gotten better. Yes, there were obvious risks. But what a lot of Americans don't realize because it's not reported every day is just, you know, every day we get feeds, a bombing here, a bombing here.

CRAIGYes, there are no longer big truck bombs necessarily that used to kill a hundred people at a time and take out the foreign ministry building or take out hotels. They have done a pretty good job of stopping that. But there still remains almost a daily state of assassinations targeted at local officials. That is one thing the local government and the local officials really struggle with, too, is they are targets. They are often being assassinated. And not only in Baghdad, but across Iraq.

CRAIGRoadside bombs continue and there's just a general feel that, you know, this place is still very dangerous. And going forward, the question is what is normal? What is the normal and acceptable level of crime in a city of 7 million people? You know, just like Washington, you're going to have shootings, you're going to have incidents. But what is the new normal for Iraq? And I don't think anyone knows yet what is the new normal for Iraq.

NNAMDIWell, the prime minister gets to appoint the police chief and you've got to wonder, where does that leave the mayor? What kind of a leader is the current mayor in Baghdad, Saber al-Issawi?

CRAIGHe's actually a very dynamic and aggressive figure. He's got these big broad plans for Iraq. He wants to open an opera, a new opera house. He wants to, you know, refurbish the parks. He wants to clean the city. He has a very ambitious agenda. And some say too ambitious, given this current situation with security and everything else. But he says he is frustrated because he can't get the support of others he needs. For instance, he can't get the support of parliament to trust him to give him the money to do some of these projects.

CRAIGHim and the governor don't get along so there's debates about where the borders of Baghdad are. I mean, it's not even clear where the borders of Baghdad are. The mayor would like the borders officially expanded a little bit. He thinks it should be able to grow out, kind of like he sees in other Arab capitals. You know, they grow out into the desert farther and farther and they sprawl, but it's kind of -- to them, it's how they view their healthy city is rated by its ability to grow out and expand.

CRAIGBut that can't happen because he runs into the governor who claims he has authority over many of the suburban areas. So, in the coming weeks the parliament's supposed to consider something called the Baghdad capital law. It kind of would be like the District's Home Rule that took place in 1973. But, you know, like Home Rule, which took, you know, decades in fact to get enacted, my hunch is this is going to take a very long time to sort out these disagreements and figure out what is Baghdad's role in the new Iraq.

NNAMDIGiven his struggles with the governor and with the prime minister, who can the mayor count on as his, quote/unquote, "political constituents"?

CRAIGWell he's -- so much of Iraq and the political parties it comes down to -- currently to the ethnic sects. He's a Shiite, I believe, so he counts on that for support. Unfortunately, that remains very much the feeling of Iraq is that if you're a Sunni, you side with, you know, with some political leaders. If you're a Shiite, you side with other political leaders. And that will remain, I think, for the foreseeable future how the countries politics are going to be broken up.

NNAMDII'm glad you brought that up because -- I will get to the calls, but I wanted to raise that issue with you because people are jockeying for influence all across Iraq. You were in Iraq when the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr paraded his army through the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, which, as you just pointed out, is a much larger neighborhood than I thought it was. He came back to Iraq this year after three years of self-imposed exile in Iran. What sense did you come away with as to how his reintroduction is likely to affect the balance of power?

CRAIGWell, it already is. He's having a big debate on over the question of whether American troops should stay or leave. You know, Muqtada al-Sadr has been very clear that if the troops remain, he could reactivate his Mahdi Army, which is a Shiite militia, that was responsible for much of the bloodshed against the Americans from about 2004 to 2008. He paraded his Mahdi Army through the streets of Sadr City for the first time in years. I actually went to the march and what you saw was probably about -- New York Times said it was 60,000.

CRAIGI don't think it was quite that many. But, you know, you know 40, 50,000 young men in different clusters of about 100 just parading down the street in new uniforms as a show of might to say, look, they weren't armed this time. We're not armed this time. But in the future, they could be armed. And it really was an eye-opening experience to me just to see that there were that many young men still willing to put on a uniform and parade through the streets of Sadr City to show their might, to show their potential might.

NNAMDIAnd if you happen to be Sunni in that situation, I guess it makes you pretty nervous.

CRAIGOh, it -- I wrote a story about this actually. It made them very uncomfortable. When Sunnis see that, they get back to the images of two years ago where, you know, Sunnis and Shiites were killing each other literally with golf clubs in the streets, you know, in a brutal near-civil war if not it was a civil war. So as Sadr influence continues to rise, Sunnis are feeling more and more isolated and nervous and scared.

CRAIGNow, the question becomes, going forward, are they going to form their own militias to try to take on Sadr if Sadr continues his rise or is there going to be some kind of political resolution to this? The American government officials seem to think -- and most experts think Iraq's not going to slip back in civil war. They think that those days are passed and they're going to continue to move forward, but every day there could be an incident that could spark a renewed sense of sectarian tension in Iraq.

NNAMDIHow does that affect the lingering sentiment of some people that you have already talked about for American troops to remain there after the end of the year? Is that a factor?

CRAIGWell, the interesting thing is that Sunnis, who form the heart of the insurgency after the invasion -- you know, al-Qaida in Iraq, for instance, is a predominantly Sunni dominated group. You know, for years and years, they fought the American troops. They wanted them to leave. Now, many Sunni leaders and even former Sunni militia members are saying they want the United States troops to stay.

CRAIGThey want them to stay because they believe now that they provide some barrier and security against the Shiite majority. And they believe that if the American troops leave, the Shiite influence will grow and the Sunnis will be more and more isolated. So that just shows you how quickly things can turn in a delicate situation like Iraq.

NNAMDIPut your headphones back on because we're going to talk with Iman (sp?) in Chantilly, Va. on that precise issue. Iman, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

IMANThank you for taking my call, Kojo. Good show as usual. I just want to say, it's just a matter of time. Iraq will never be the same. I think the Mahdi Army is waiting. They know the Americans are leaving. They have a deadline to leave and they have to learn something about Bahrain. What you see in Bahrain is going to happen in Iraq. It's very simple. The Shia wants to dominate Iraq regardless of what happen. They are the majority and they will not take no answer for Sunni to control that country again.

IMANAnd that's how -- I mean, what I was supposed to say actually, the reporter already said. It is the deep hatred between Sunni and Shia that they will never forgive Sunni again for the rest of their life. And the civil -- it's just a matter of time. I don't know when it's going to happen. But as soon as they find out Americans are leaving, Mahdi Army will do their work. They will assassinate every leader of Sunni is credible. And that's what's going to happen. And thanks for taking my call.

NNAMDIIman, thank you for making your call. Tim Craig, did you hear anything like that in Baghdad?

CRAIGYeah. I mean, you can almost -- you can still almost sense the ethnic tension, even -- you know, there are instances among people we work with most closely where, as American journalists, if you're going to a Sunni neighborhood, if you have a translator, you would probably take a Sunni translator. If you're going to a Shiite neighborhood, you'd probably take a Shiite translator. Those things are still very much occurring or sort of recommended.

CRAIGI wrote story when I was there about this other -- Haria, it's called in Baghdad, where, you know, a lot of the militia members have started to reform. A lot of them were jailed under the American -- by the Americans or the Iraqi government. They're now being freed from jail for whatever reason, coming out and they're organizing the militias again. And this neighborhood I was at, you know, every seventh day for the last two months, a Sunni man has been killed or executed.

CRAIGIt doesn't get a lot of attention. It's not really that newsworthy. But taken together, it shows you that it's a very delicate situation and it's going to take a lot of effort for Iraq to avoid slipping back into further ethnic tension. And it's not just Sunni versus Shiites. In the north, when I went to Mosul, there's a problem with Kurds. Kurds influence the north. And whether the Kurdish and the Peshmerga are going to try to exert their influence to the south, that's creating additional ethnic tensions with the mostly Sunnis that live in Mosul. But that remains a potential flashpoint going forward as what happens in northern Iraq as well.

NNAMDISo that a lot of this, it seems, is premised on when the U.S. pulls out. Apparently, our caller and others are anticipating that when the U.S. pulls out, not necessarily the day after or the day after that, but at some point, these tensions will build into open conflict.

CRAIGPerhaps. The one saving grace, I think, that may prevent that is I think you generally get a sense -- we talked to a lot of Iraqis. They're sick of war. They are sick of the violence. They're sick of the bombings. You know, you have this broad middle that they're not necessarily on one side or the other. They, of course, they identify with their religious and ethnic sect, but they're sick of war.

CRAIGAnd they really want to move forward and they don't -- I think this broad middle is going to be very hard pressed to get engaged one way or the other into another ethnic conflict. If you think about it, they've been -- it's been eight years. By some estimates, 400, 500,000 Iraqis have been killed in the sectarian violence or the invasion. And I think a lot of people are ready to move on. But the question is, can they move on as well as you have these extremes on both sides pulling the country in opposite directions?

NNAMDIHere's John in Washington, D.C. John, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

JOHNHey, fellas. Thanks for taking my call. On a fundamental level -- you know, this is segueing off Tim's comment that some of the folks on the ground actually calling for Saddam's days. You know, it's analogous to former Soviet Union and when I was in Armenia working there, you know, initially, as Americans, we're surprised to hear people in their 40s that had known, you know, communist state, calling for those days.

JOHNBut when you think about it, they had money in their pocket. They are able to travel, maybe not to the States, but pretty much the entire world. They had vacations, Social Security, et cetera, et cetera and a great education system. Now they have, you know, the great democracy, that's all they have. Just in name only. And it goes to, you know, what they used to call in Africa, constitutions without constitutionalism.

JOHNYou know, in Iraq, it's the same thing. If they had that liberal democracy seed there, they would have grown it themselves. And this all gets down to, you know, with the army pulling out. You know, I don't know that we did a good job, you know, whether it's the day after or three months later, if we pull out, everything falls apart. And this is exactly what a lot of us were saying when we opposed the war. Not because we were hippie beatniks because if you traveled anywhere, you knew this was going to happen. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear Tim's thoughts on that. I appreciate it.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call. Tim?

CRAIGWell, it gets back to the question of no one knows if it's going to fall apart. And I think it's premature to assume that it's going to fall apart. I mean, I think there are -- definitely tensions exist. But like I said before, there's a deep sense among many people that they're sick of the struggle and they're sick of the war. And they want the government to work. They, you know, Iraq has oil revenues. So hopefully, after a while, the oil revenue can start, you know, building some of the services, building up some of the infrastructure of the country and it will, you know, not just completely resort back to civil war.

CRAIGAnd most people I do talk to, both in the American side and the Iraqi politicians, they really are skeptical that it could fall back to how it was with the civil conflict. With that said, though, of course, the tension really does exist and really remains. What happens, for instance, if the United States or Israel, for whatever reason, decide they need to take military action against Iran because of the nuclear issue over there.

NNAMDIOh, yeah.

CRAIGHow does that play in Iraq? No one knows. But my hunch is that would be quite controversial especially with the Shiites in southern Iraq, if that were to occur. You know, one thing we haven't talked about, but the Iranian influence in Iraq is definitely growing and increasing. Some of this connected to Sadr. He studies in Iran. But in general, you know, there's -- Sunnis particularly fear the Iranian influence and how did they react if that continues.

CRAIGWe wrote a story last -- before I left, which is a very real issue that, you know, 15 soldiers died last month in Iraq. Most of those soldiers were killed by what U.S. officials suspect were Iranian-made missiles or roadside bombs or armor piercing grenades. The American military, over the years, had done a pretty good job of beefing up defenses from, like, Al-Qaida and Iraq, which is predominantly Sunni. And, like, the roadside bombs that used to target the American convoys, they changed the structure of their vehicles to try to, you know, prevent that.

CRAIGBut now, because of these weapons that the Shiite militias are getting presumably from Iran, they are able to penetrate some of that. That's a problem going forward and something that I believe the United States is going to have to try to figure out. If they're going to keep troops in the ground in Iraq past the end of the year, how do they then guard against these Iranian-made weapons?

NNAMDIWell, it's likely to be an intriguing situation after the U.S. troops leave, if and when the U.S. troops all leave. And it's a situation that I get the impression that you might be interested in going back to cover at some point.

CRAIGYeah, I mean, I said I'd go back at some point. I mean, we -- like all news organizations, we'll probably be reevaluating at some point how we cover Iraq as the U.S. forces continue to draw down. But I find the work overall fascinating. As a journalist on a personal level, Baghdad can be a pretty hard place to live because you can't really get out. I mean, you get out a lot during the day, but you can't just walk to the coffee shop. You still can't walk -- you can go out to a few restaurants, but you really shouldn't just walk around, you know, by yourself.

CRAIGSo in that way, you spend a lot of time in the house, especially in the evening. And it can be a pretty isolating existence at times. But overall, I found the work fascinating and I'd probably likely go back.

NNAMDIWell, you missed Sulaimon Brown testifying in dark glasses before the D.C. Council on what happened there. So think about that when you think about going to Baghdad again, what you might be missing here.

CRAIGBut thanks to the internet, you can stay fairly well connected. I remember reading all about Mr. Brown's testimony on Twitter and Facebook and (unintelligible) .

NNAMDII figured you did. Tim Craig is a reporter of the Washington Post. He joined us to discuss his stint this summer in Baghdad. Tim Craig, thank you so much for joining us. Good luck to you.

CRAIGThank you very much.

NNAMDIWe're going to take a short break. When we come back, the Financial Protection Bureau -- or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a nominee to head it. It's your turn to tell us what you think about all of this. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.