Tom, it's my opinion that there is no right answer, that the entire situation, once you go in, deteriorates no matter what your intentions or actions. The cultural divide between Islamic culture and what you and I agree on defines American culture is a chasm Evil Kneivel would never attempt to jump. If we shot looters, we created orphans and widows and people that hated us. If we stood back and watched as we did, we created hospitals and community service centers laid bare for the very people that needed them. If we put in enough servicemen to simply overwhelm the looters with pure numbers and just used normal police force to stop them we resembled too much the occupying force that the culture so severely abhors.

I listened to an independent news journalist interviewed yesterday that spent the last year in Iraq, dressed to fit in (he's Indian) who wandered the streets and talked to the people one on one. He said the good news reports you so often quote coming out of Iraq are mostly crafted by the military authority there and the few truths to them are extremely isolated cases. He spoke of how the Sunnis and the Shiites, normally bitter enemies, have joined together against the common enemy of the US and the local government we've installed. He said the majority of foreign reporters never stray out of the secure military compounds for fear of their lives and use the military as their primary news source.

Tom, I would love for what he says to be false but there's such a ring of truth to it. It fits what I know of human nature especially what I've observed of huge cultural divides. Have your seriously studied the region's history? There is nothing I've learned about it to make me believe that anything other than a brutal dictatorship can keep the area from going completely berserk. Maybe the administration's heart was in the right place but their logic and intelligence were elsewhere.