<Maybe no rebellion in Basra? We'll see. Jury is still out on a lot of things...

Some grave concerns of mine:

The shia in the south are no friends of ours. They hate Saddam, but not only did we knife them in the back in the 90's, we are also not consistent with the predominant shia ideology: namely we are a secular state wanting secular rule for Iraq. I doubt it is a vision these folks will share. Iran will *gladly* aid them, train them and insite them to act against us over the next many years of occupation.

Something like 14 out of 18 Iraqi provinces were out of saddams control during the height of the 90's rebellion. And we didn't help (and even lifted the no-fly restrictions in part of Iraq to allow air-assult to suppress the rebellion). 14 of 18 provinces are likely not keen to throw flowers at our feet... And possibly the 4 others were happy enough(or rich and powerful enough relative to the rest of the country) with saddam that they won't be keen to love us either.

The sunnis are a minority in Iraq, and have, through the regime of Saddam, exercised more political power than the majority shia. Don't think there are not axes to grind.

Meanwhile, the secular Kurds are hated for their secularism by shia and sunni. The Sufi Kurds are hated by nearly everyone for their 'heresy'... and to top it off their are even some [a few] violently fundamentalist non-secular non-sufi Kurds running around who hate the other kurds and everyone else.

So we are taking power away from the Sunis, giving it to the shia who don't like us at all and would love to do some 'payback' on the sunis. Giving a LOT to the minority kurds who are hated by all but 'like' us and (in some cases) advocate for the same state we advocate for (secular democracy). Very thin ice...

And don't forget 12 years of sanctions and 12 years of propaganda bleating out the 'vileness' of the US. Thats not easy to overcome. Granted, most of the propaganda is a lie and the Sanctions would have allowed adequate provisions to the Iraqis for most of the 12 years they were in place, except for Saddams greed... We see that, but do the Iraqis?

I think the Bush admin bought their own propaganda. I think they expected most military units to surrender and most towns to 'take care' of the remaining regime leaders. I think they expected mothers to stream from the city to embrace the soldiers and offer their daughters for marriage. I think there is more than a little dismay in the administration about the ambivalence of the Iraqi people to embrace the idea of a US military government....

I think they [the administration] fell into the false dichotomy of thinking that because most of Iraq hated Saddam, they would welcome us...

Get ready for a LOOOONG and BLOOODY occupation of Iraq. I don't think we have any clue about how to do this right. Every day Basra and Umm Quasar go without fresh water and food, every stray bomb that kills an Iraqi, every assult at the Iraqi peoples pride will be more anger at us and less support for our 'nation building by force of will'....

I could be wrong. The Sunni/Shia/Kurd/Sufi/Islamist/Secularist synergy in Iraq is probably the strangest dynamic in the Gulf, and while I have read some I think it would take living there with a PhD in the topic to really grok whats going on... But I certainly think this will be no cakewalk, and I certainly think the US/UK administrations expected a cakewalk WRT the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

Davin L.