Did we not substantially rebuild Japan after WW2?  That was pretty
successful, wasn't it?  Sorry, but I'm too young to have experienced it :).

John Lee



At 04:14 PM 12/19/03 EST, Wirt Atmar wrote:
>
>It's his conclusory sentence that is the most fundamentally inaccurate:
>
>
>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
>
>* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
>* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
>
>

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *