[Seascamp]

The alleged chaos and bedlam going on in Iraq is only true in the minds of the political contenders and those who want to be first in line to take ownership of Iraq?s resources, that's all. It?s a scary place with the usual things that go on in scary places, not unlike any number of our own inner city areas, but basically moving along and playing catch up ball. A stat that always amazes me is the comparison of current security / military forces in Iraq today verses what it took Saddam to keep the lid on the place. I?d guess that a ratio of about 1 to 5 is about right and that is a conservative estimate. Probably closer to 1 to 7-10 is more realistic but Saddam had a tremendous number of guards guarding the guards who in turn were guarding those guards, etc., so on and so forth. Unfortunately, the current political contenders cannot afford any successes in Iraq at all, so their press advocates will not report on the infrastructure rebuilding that has gone on and will continue to go on. By neglect and indifference the Saddam regime let the entire industrial infrastructure just go to junk and when all that is back on line, then the real bad news will hit. Iraq will not be a beggar/ charity case any longer and will be able to sustain forward momentum with minimal assistance and the presence of a fair bit of back-up security clout.

All in all, it isn?t pretty but it isn?t a rolling fire ball either as our politically biased media would have us believe. Sure Boats, expect continual gang land style hits and bushwhackings, comes with the territory in that crazy place and I'm not sure that there ever has or ever will be anything different. But the trick now is to get the Iraqi security forces doing the hitting back and bushwhacking back, just keep one line behing the perenial flail and more or less out of the way, almost.

Scamp