[x-factor]

Good piece of journalism. (Not that it would come as a surprise to anyone who has ever actually observed the US.)

Its funny. Journalists tend to think of themselves as anti-establishment and free-thinkers. Anti-US rhetoric has become so common and ingrained in the last 5 years, it will be interesting to see if we get more pro-US kinds of stories if the journalists start to view that as an anti-establishment/free thinking kind of thing to do.

I think the last two paragraphs are especially interesting. They get at something I think is a huge unspoken truth about the Iraq War: any other military in the world (or even in history) would have had 10x the casualties (friendly and civillian), war crimes, etc. and much, much less success. The article doesn't come right out and say it, but it rightly implies, I think, that so much of the perceived failure of Iraq is just completely unrealistic expectations coming home to roost.