IF YOU SPEND TOO MUCH TIME LISTENING TO THE CRAZIES...:

The forgotten war: Five years on, the impact of the Iraq war on Britain has been remarkably slight (Bagehot, Mar 19th 2008, The Economist)

A MILLION people marched in London. A million dinner parties were wrecked by violent rows. It was the most divisive issue Britain had known in decades, infinitely more controversial than it was at the time in America. Five years ago 46,000 British servicemen helped to overthrow Saddam Hussein; 4,100 soldiers are still in Iraq. Considering how schismatic the war felt then, and how badly it has gone since, it has made eerily little difference to Britain.

...it's easy to forget how cheap, bloodless, and easy this war has been.

MORE:
War-ravaged Iraq city 'alive again': Fallouja has been rebuilt since the 2004 battles. Stores again are doing a brisk business, and the population is nearly back up to 300,000. (Tony Perry, March 21, 2008, LA Times)

The one-lane bridge over the Euphrates River where a mob hung the charred bodies of slain Americans four years ago is now a focal point in the revitalization of this war-ravaged city.

The Iraqi government and the U.S. plan to widen the pedestrian pathways on either side of the bridge so shoppers can stream into Fallouja's western neighborhood and buy food, clothing and other goods from stores that again line the streets of a city once given up for dead.

The comeback of Fallouja, the site of two major battles between Marines and insurgents in 2004, surprises even the most optimistic U.S. planners.

"It continues to outpace all expectations," said Navy Capt. John Dal Sant, part of a State Department-funded effort called the Provincial Reconstruction Team for Fallouja.

City Council leader Sheik Hamed Ahmed said that he was pleased with the city's progress but that he needed more generators for his neighborhood. Ahmed's three predecessors were assassinated by insurgents, but he has refused to back down.

"Fallouja is alive again," he said.

Restaurants, bakeries, photo shops, tire stores, Internet cafes, a body-building studio and other businesses line the avenues and side streets. BMWs share lanes with donkey carts on congested thoroughfares.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 20, 2008 7:27 PM