THIS WASHINGTON POST editorial on the state of progress in post-war Iraq has some positive, and some negative points to make. Good reading.

Some of the violence recently directed at U.S. forces may have come from military or party officials stripped of their posts and pensions, while various would-be Iraqi leaders are angrily protesting the political slowdown.

But the overall mood may have been captured by a survey recently conducted by one of Baghdad's new newspapers: Eighty-five percent of respondents said coalition forces had done a bad job maintaining order after the war; 65 percent said they should not yet leave Iraq.