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Prologue

Host Ira Glass speaks with reporter Larry Kaplow and producer Nancy Updike, who spent a month in Iraq as the US combat mission was ending, in August 2010, talking to Iraqis. They play excerpts from a conversation they had with a Shiite professor—who had pizza recently with a Sunni friend, and realized just how tense things still are in Iraq.

Act One: What Just Happened?

To understand where we are today in Iraq, we tell the story of one Iraqi, Saad Oraibi Ghaffouri Al-Obeidi, also known as Abu Abed—a man who fought alongside the US during the surge, and is now in exile—and what he saw, and was part of, over seven years of the war.

Additional This American Life Stories On The War in Iraq

Private Contractors True Number of Iraqi Deaths Lessons Learned in the War Soldiers' Stories Soldier Bloggers A House in Baghdad Citizen-Diplomat Tries to End the War Two Random Guys Try to Help Trying to Rebuild Iraq Start of the War And on the aftermath: Talk to an Iraqi - from TV series Sam Slaven

Act Two: Brothers from Another Planet

Sara Blaisdell tells the story of a group of Iraqi brothers whom her husband Sam befriended over the internet, and has been speaking with weekly for almost seven years. Their surprisingly intimate relationship has pulled Sam into a world that few Americans can access.