The "conspiracy card" is too easy to play - its almost as easy as the "oil imperialism" card, and equally dismissive and blind to facts.

The International Herald Tribune has been publishing stories recently emphasising that things in Iraq aren't as bad as they seem, despite the lack of security, the lack of electricity, and the lack of running water. Commerce is getting better in Iraq, and outside of the Sunni area north of Baghdad there seems to be a lot more calm and order.

But the fact the first civilian administrator, Jay Garner, was sacked by Bush suggests strongly to me that even the administration knows things are going less than spectacularly.

There has been a lot of criticism over the lack of planning in maintaining utilities and preventing the looting and violence which occurred post-invasion. I think it is merited. Its easy enough to crush the Iraqi army, it seems, but another matter to actually rebuild a country.

Pro-invasion people keep citing Germany and Japan, while anti-invasion pundits keep referring to Grenada.

One way of improving things would be to get in more non-American/UK troops. This would bring more security to the country, and send a lot of tired and increasingly edgy US troops home.

But most countries won't do this unless there is a UN mandate for it, and the US won't hand over military control to the UN.