ANOTHER TAKE on an achingly slow reconstruction effort. The quote below offers one point of view but you'll find others if you read the entire article.

Experts in postwar reconstruction stress that it is a difficult job in the best circumstances, and Iraq has been particularly difficult.

"We were prepared for a lot of things, but we weren't prepared for this complete anarchic take-down, having people taking wires out of buildings," said Scott Feil, a retired Army officer who directed a major study on postwar reconstruction, published in January by the Association of the U.S. Army and the private Center for Security and International Studies.

"We half-expected the (Iraqi) police force to still be functional," Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, 3rd Infantry Division commander, told reporters yesterday.