A THOROUGHLY CORRUPT SOCIETY

Marine Capt. Sean Dunn spent almost a month cajoling courthouse officials in Kut for a detailed inventory of what they needed. He expected a laundry list, squabbles over financing and groans from his superior officers when he presented what he was sure would be a tome.

"So after weeks of this," Dunn said, "I get one piece of paper from Chief Judge Jahwher Mahood saying, `I need a Thuraya phone, a car, a refrigerator and a TV.' And I said, `I see, so these are the needs of a court system for 1 million people and some 200 employees?"'

The preposterous, personal nature of the request underlines some of the problems coalition forces face, and not just in Wassit Province, southeast of Baghdad, where the New Orleans-headquartered 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines is in charge.

Throughout Iraq, as the nation cracks through the totalitarian shell Saddam Hussein spent decades building, a reliable, trustworthy system of law and order is essentially being built from scratch.