I've been off the political/news grid for the week. What did I miss?

[vi5]

I just got back from a week spent in a fairly out of the way village in Poland visiting my wife's family. The only TV I watched was the first day and the last day when we were in cities, and couldn't understand any of it since I didn't speak the language (and obviously it was not US oriented). And I had no internet access or newspapers.

It was nice and relaxing not finding myself stressed or worried or angered or annoyed by current events, but obviously it's back to the real world.

What are the major things that happened in the past week since the blogosphere is so fast moving most of the stories seem to be from the past day or 2. I checked in at icasualties.org and see that there are 33 US casualties already for the month of august. What is the story behind that number? Was it 1 attack, or just a really horrific week of multiple attacks?

Thanks in advance for anyone patient enough to catch me up to speed.

[uppityperson]

1. here's a website for military deaths in Iraq

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Up to 1833 this morning. 8, 2, 18, 2, 1, 2 =33 for the first 6 days of August.

A not-armored enough vehicle carrying a bunch or reservists hit a land mine that flipped it and burnt it killing 14 reservists.

Click on "Military Fatalities: By Month" then month you want (8 for August) to get details. Check out "coalition casualties by location over time" under the stastics dropdown also for an interesting, sad, visual (not dead bodies).