"CHILD MORTALITY IS FALLING"

Progress is not rapid, but there is progress.

Schools and hospitals aren’t merely open, they are being refurbished. An extensive vaccination programme is underway. Child mortality is falling. The economy is improving, even though unemployment and corruption remain significant problems.

Last week, Kamil al- Keylani, the finance minister, announced an ambitious economic stimulus package, prompting al-Zamaan, the most popular of the 170 newspapers in the country, to declare: "This new reform plan ends 30 years of economic stagnation under Saddam’s regime."

Each week brings more examples of important, but unglamorous reforms.

And please note the statement that ends this piece of analysis:

So, is everything going well in Iraq? No, of course not. There remain serious problems that will bedevil coalition and Iraqi efforts at reconstruction in both the short and long term. But that should not blind observers to the truth that progress, however halting and imperfect, is being made.

If the current guerrilla war American troops face is lost, the chances are it will have been lost by a lack of resolve in the US and Britain rather than in Iraq itself.

Indeed