Recent Scenes from Iraq -- the Big Picture

Boston.com has put up a great collection of recent photos from Iraq that show both the ugliness and the hope for a brighter future. The photos are inspiring, sad, amazing, and even bewildering. Some are a little hard to look at. In the photo above students attend class at Mama Ayser, a private school in Baghdad June 28, 2010. Once banned under Saddam Hussein, private schools have flourished in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as Iraqis become increasingly frustrated with their government's failure to provide basic services. (REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen)

In this photo Abbas Ahmed navigates a network of generator wires during a power outage in Baghdad, Iraq on June 25, 2010. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban). Private power providers in Baghdad are selling electricity at almost four times the maximum legal price, exploiting shortages and stifling summer heat while crime bosses pilfer dwindling public supplies.

Tanker trucks carrying oil snake their way through Haj Omran, Iraq, a mountainous Kurdish resort town on the border with Iran on June 7, 2010. The smuggling of tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil and refined fuels daily from northern Iraq to Iran, in violation of new U.S. sanctions, is stoking tensions between the Iraqi central government and its Kurdish provincial counterparts. (AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed)

US soldiers carry the body of a fellow soldier killed in a car bomb attack during a memorial ceremony on June 11, 2010 on FOB Cobra, near Jalula, Diyala Province, Iraq. Specialists William C. Yauch (23) of Batesville, Arkansas and Israel P. Obryan (24) of Newbern, Tennessee, from Charlie Company, 5th BN, 20th Infantry Reg, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division were killed along with 2 civilians and 1 Iraqi policeman when a suicide bomber drove into their patrol. (Warrick Page/Getty Images). Newbern Tennessee is not very far from where I am (Knoxville).

Photos of Iraqi soldiers killed in the line of duty adorn the entrance to an Iraqi Army base on June 2, 2010 near Al Guwair, Iraq. (Warrick Page/Getty Images)

To see more of these photos please go to the original article here at Boston.com.