John asks:

> Are the "facts" presented therein accurate or not?  It seems to me that
this
> man would not have to have his unit deployed in Iraq to have access to the
> information he presents, so I question the relevancy of that argument.  Can
> anyone speak to the content?

It's his conclusory sentence that is the most fundamentally inaccurate:

"... Yet, little or none of this information has been published by
the Press corps that prides itself on bringing you all the news that's
important."

I've read and heard everyone of the items that he's listed many times on the
standard news channels. But there are substantial caveats with every item
listed as well, and they are an even more important part of the story.

One of the most critical items he lists is:

"... the Iraqi judiciary is fully independent."

is at the moment much more hope than reality. No Iraqi constitution yet
exists to insure an independent judiciary, nor even the voter registration rolls to
determine the qualified electorate that will vote in the ratification of the
constitution and elect the new parliament.

Local criminal courts are up and functioning and that does help bring about a
much needed measure of security to local populations, but a national supreme
court and court of appeals structure is for the most part completely absent at
the moment and almost certainly will be for the next year or so.

Iraq is not yet a nation of laws. There are a great many, very well educated
people in the country who very much want it to be, but the country is also
balanced on a knife's edge at the present time; it could lapse as easily into
civil war as it could develop into a liberal civil democracy. To say that Iraqi
judiciary is now fully independent and offer no caveats to that statement is to
completely misstate the seriousness and difficulty of the task that lies
ahead.

If we do this right, the United States is likely to be integrally involved in
the development of Iraq for the next 30 to 50 years. If we do this wrongly,
we will abandon them in the next 2 to 3 years and we will have to revisit the
area many times in the future.

Wirt Atmar

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