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Powerclown, I saw some positive developments in this article. Did you manage to read these statements:
"Peter Khalil, a former national security policy adviser for the Coalition Provisional Authority that ruled Iraq after Hussein's fall, said the rosy views expressed by Bush and Cheney reflect tentative hopes for progress down the road rather than a focus on day-to-day events at the moment. "They're thinking more long term when they make such optimistic remarks," said Khalil, now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. "There's some cause for optimism; however, things could turn badly very quickly."
"Major Sunni leaders recently agreed to abandon their boycott of the political process; if they can be brought into the drafting of a new constitution and subsequent elections, Khalil and others say, it would undercut the elements of the insurgency that are powered by disaffection among the once-ruling Sunni minority. To do that, Khalil said, the new Shiite-led Iraqi government has to find the right balance in terms of including former members of Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party."
"If you address these issues, it's very, very difficult to see them continue on in the use of violence because they become part of that [governing] structure," Khalil said."
"A Western diplomat in Baghdad said victory would have to be won in a drawn-out struggle that will have peaks and valleys. "We should not expect some big-bang breakthrough so that one day the insurgency ends," he said on the condition of anonymity. "We should expect a long grind-it-out." After all, he said, "this is the hardest thing we've done to try to rebuild a state almost from zero."
"If you pull back far enough," he added, "you see a positive trend. . . . The negative is we've had some really spectacular car bombs, really gruesome car bombs and we've had a terrible civilian death toll. . . . The overall trend lines for the last six to seven months are better, but not so much better that we can say it's over or we won."
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