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Tonight on Pods and Blogs we'll be leading with an item on Iraq. There's much to talk about: a , claims and reports of . But this week we'll begin with an event that allowed many Iraqis a brief respite from their daily struggle to survive, . Our guest, who lives in Baghdad and blogs as , wrote about the victory in a post that powerfully contrasts the joy of celebration with the misery of conflict. Here are a couple of extracts, you can read all of :

As our team scored its goal, we all started jumping up and down. Each minute of the last ten minutes to me felt like an hour. I just wanted the referee to end the game. And wowwwwww, no, wowwww does not explain the scenes after that. No, it really doesn’t describe those Iraqi guys with me. They all got up from their chairs screaming, shouting, dancing, singing. It was amazing. I cried, I cried for it was extremely emotional [....]

Everytime I take a break and then come back to my workstation, I find more and more emails of articles and Iraqi football songs from my coworkers. You can feel it in the air. Even at a meeting earlier this morning with the General’s presence he praised the team and congratulated all the Iraqis. It was nice to see everyone enjoying the moment. Everyone, without any exceptions. In a war torn country filled with rivers of blood and streets of charred flesh, it was as if God was smiling on us again