[rmnunez]

Yes, lots of qualifiers conditioning any success in Iraq and plenty of subjectivity in their importance and how they impair satisfactory performance. The US has failed to perform as promised, but not as completely as claimed. Its why I refered to the half-empty or full glass. Some people see Iraq as an unmitigated distaster, but there are positive effects and we all recognize some of these; Saddam's ouster, verifying there are no WMDs, instituting a representative goverment by the ballot and ending genocidical practices are all easily recognized positive outcomes. Failing to at least repair and maintain the infrastructure they damaged, the emergence of an insurgency, lack of adequate security and poor economic conditions are all readily recognized negative effects of the occupation.

Fortunately the shortcomings can be corrected, the US has the wealth and power to fix Iraq's infrastructure and maintain it, they are making inroads against the insurgency. Everything is related; with an adequately equipped and local trained military force and improvements in the infrastructure the insurgency will lose strength. If the united statians can train and equip another 25 thousand Iraqi regulars and with the 40 thousand already set these can provide sufficient protection for infrastructure repairs, with the excellent equipment, resources and know how of the Coalitioneers, things could easily improve quickly.

The Coalition needs to pick an area that can be used as a model, clear the region of insurgents and terrorists, establish a safe perimeter, man it with local military, recruit plenty of young disenfranchised Iraqis for the work crews and get them to the job site with all that heavy earth moving equipment. Hold up their accomplisments and the local benefits as an example of what comes with pacification. Do this a couple of times and Iraqis will come to realize things go better with the military working on waterworks and power plants rather than chasing down insurgents or terrorists.