Originally Posted by BBKing

Define 'very well' and 'back on its feet'. I don't particularly define them in the context of vast amounts of reconstruction aid vanishing into the pockets of corrupt businessmen we put in charge (more than vanished in the oil for Iraq scandal). Nor in not having reliable electricity and water, or it being impossible to move around safely (the BBC had to send someone by military transport plane to Basra because they didn't have anyone on the ground and it was too dangerous to travel overland. Nor in having huge numbers of unemployment, hundreds of whom are murdered every month while looking for work, or in having a vast upsurge in criminality, including kidnapping, quite independently of terrorist activity. Nor in an oil-rich country having petrol shortages (hmm - sounds familiar). Nor in having quasi-judicial death squads taking people away and shooting them (hang on, didn't Saddam's boys do that?).

I really think that things are far, far worse there than is reported, simply because reporting is so difficult (another journalist murdered in Basra this week). It's not a new Vietnam, it's the first Iraq, which will be spoken about in 30 years as one of the great foreign policy failure of all time, in managing to make Saddam's rule look like an oasis of peace and good government.

Countries that are 'working very well' don't simultaneously have the world's largest suicide bombing campaign at the same time as the world's largest theft and the world's costliest military operation.