As Americans move on out of Iraq, they are figuring out what to take, what to leave behind.

From the New York Times (via Business Standard)

One item staying is General David H Petraeus's bed. For nearly a decade he and all other commanding generals in Iraq slept, strangely, in a bed with a pastel-hued, lacquered headboard depicting in frieze two doves clasping ribbons in their beaks, against a field of pink and blue poppies.

When American troops commandeered the palace complex that included this room for barracks and headquarters early in the war they retained the original French Provincial-style furnishings, including the bed.

Aha. It was all those "hearts and flowers," night after cloying night, that led to the "hearts and minds" fiasco.