PROGRESS CONTINUES

Some won't appreciate the magnitude of this...believing this is how things are "supposed to be".

But isn't that the point? It wasn't this way under Saddam...even without the maniac insurgent terrorists running around blowing stuff up.

Way to go guys!

It was an engineering success on the order of stringing the first cables for the Brooklyn Bridge or coaxing the first glimmer of starlight through some giant telescope to help explain the structure of the universe.

But when it occurred late last month, the achievement remained cloaked in absolute secrecy, marked only by a quiet celebration among participants who might remain forever unknown to history.

Raw sewage was treated in Baghdad.

The stream of treated water that eventually found its way into the Tigris River was hardly more than a trickle, roughly 20 million gallons a day from a city that produces raw sewage at something like 10 times that rate or more. But the accomplishment is all but epoch-making in a city where the sewage plants are in such disrepair that for the last 10 to 15 years, every drop of that muck was poured untreated into the river, fouling everything from boat landings to drinking water systems downstream.

Successes like this one were just what Congress envisioned when it appropriated billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq, hoping the improvements would convince Iraqis of America's good will.