Victory's decription HAS been offered, to be fair -- a central Iraqi government controlling enough soldiers and policemen to suppress violence, and an elective bicameral representative government to manage the whole.

The problem is, as has been stated elsewhere, that the country comes from different roots than the U.S. does. Loyalties are not self, family and country in that order, as they often are for Americans. They are more like self, tribe, sect, family, period.

The tribal emphasis is the factionalizing element which makes the dynamics so different. They may seem like one people, or three, but in fact they are scores and each has a tightly bonded structure of loyalies, inherited bonds and inherited hatreds.

About which they are passionate.

If Rumsfeld or Rove or Dumb-YAhoo had bothered to study the ground they would have realized something about this dramatic and deep cultural difference and somehow accounted for it in their so-called planning. But they had no plan past toppling Baghdad.

Pffffffft.


A