What? Wha'd I say? That some progress was occuring in Iraq? Is that what you found surprising? Here's an example: the Iraqi high court recently ruled that the Parliament had acted beyond the limits of the iraqi Constitution when they had stripped one of their members of his status because he had traveled to Israel. THis is a classic instance of a rule of law being acted on as senior to transient waves of group-think and push-button reactions, a sure sign of the emergence (whether temporary or not) of civilized thinking.

At the same time barbaric applications of mindless violence nad hatred are still littering the city of Baghdad with corpses.

(As an aside, I remember as a child, thinking of Baghdad as a far-away and magical place, the home of djinns and ifrits, magic lamps and flying carpets and sultry, doe-eyed beauties. Alas, for the lost dreams of childhood.)

A