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Our occupation of Iraq and the fragile surge has been all but blacked out in the U.S. media, but thankfully, the foreign press is still out there trying to bring the truth to the rest of the world. A big part of the surge was the Awakening Project. The goal of the project was to pay Sunni and former insurgents to fight al Qaeda and drive them out of their towns. The result is 80,000 angry men and a surge on the brink of collapse.

Despite spending some $12 billion dollars a month in Iraq, the Bush administration has failed to pay most of the Awakening members and their patience is all but gone. Thousands of men have given up and walked away from the program and resentment toward the U.S. has reached a boiling point. This video from The Guardian is a real eye opener as they go inside these groups and let them tell their stories in their own words.

They hear news accounts that the U.S. military is taking credit for the surge and they are angered. They feel that they are doing the dirty work that Americans should be doing and they feel they're being used as propaganda to sway the U.S. presidential elections. Senator John McCain has staked his entire presidential campaign on Iraq and the success of the surge. I hope that he, along with all Americans, has the chance to watch this video and see the real surge.