Well, this is pretty bleak. Iraq Today, Baghdad’s inde­pen­dent, English-language news­pa­per, pub­lishes a Secu­rity Bul­letin that doesn’t paint an encour­ag­ing pic­ture:

CMCC [Civil-Military Coor­di­na­tion Cen­ter] cites Adhamiyah, Rusafa, Thowra, al-Muthanna, Shaab, Hur­riyah, Shuahla and the area around Sad­dam Inter­na­tional air­port as uncer­tain or hos­tile areas.
Car­jack­ing is rife in the cap­i­tal. Do not walk around the streets with bags or mobile/satellite phones.
The cur­few in Bagh­dad begins at 11pm and ends at 4am.
Iraq’s high­ways are con­sid­ered dan­ger­ous. High­way 10 between Bagh­dad and the Jor­dan­ian bor­der is espe­cially haz­ardous, par­tic­u­larly around the Ramadi area. Armed ban­dits oper­ate this route, using fast cars to stop large con­voys of vehi­cles. High­way 8, between Bagh­dad and Hillah is also con­sid­ered a no go route by human­i­tar­ian organ­i­sa­tions. High­way 1, between Bagh­dad and Qasim is also very dan­ger­ous.
Police are present on the streets of the cap­i­tal but they are Out-gunned and outnumbered.

Jeeze. Good to know. Espe­cially about High­way 10. I took that high­way when I left Bagh­dad in late April, but didn’t have any prob­lems. We ran it dur­ing the day, and there were a num­ber of places where earthen embank­ments had been set up forc­ing the taxi to fol­low a tight “S” path ver­rrrrrry slowly — in other words, it would have been great for an ambush. Luck­ily, noth­ing hap­pened. When J., my friend who left a week or so before me, took that route, how­ever, he men­tioned that his dri­ver stopped to chat with a man on the side of the road wear­ing a black face mask and car­ry­ing an AK-47. Nice.