The worst-case scenario

In the past couple of days, the WaPo has had three stories with some good news about Iraq.

First, it was The Lessons of Counterinsurgency

The last time the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment served in Iraq, in 2003-04, its performance was judged mediocre, with a series of abuse cases growing out of its tour of duty in Anbar province.

But its second tour in Iraq has been very different, according to specialists in the difficult art of conducting a counterinsurgency campaign -- fighting a guerrilla war but also trying to win over the population and elements of the enemy. Such campaigns are distinct from the kind of war most U.S. commanders have spent decades preparing to fight.

In the last nine months, the regiment has focused on breaking the insurgents' hold on Tall Afar, a town of 290,000. Their operations here "will serve as a case study in classic counterinsurgency, the way it is supposed to be done," said Terry Daly, a retired intelligence officer specializing in the subject.

It paints a positive picture, even if "Baghdad is a much tougher nut to crack".

Then, from Troops Honed in '03 Fighting a Different War in Iraq

The focus has definitely shifted," agreed Capt. Klaudius Robinson, the Polish-born commander of a cavalry troop based south of Baghdad. On his current tour, he estimates, he spends half his time on "engagement" with the population, perhaps a quarter working with Iraqi forces and "maybe 20 percent going after the bad guys."

Robinson noted that every patrol he sends out includes an interpreter, in contrast to the first year of the U.S. military presence here. "It's a huge difference" being able to communicate clearly instead of using "hand signals and broken English."

In 2003-04, the 4th Infantry had a rash of abuse cases, including some illegal killings of detainees. For its second tour, the division has its own cultural adviser, who writes a kind of advice column on Islamic and Iraqi mores in the Ivy Leaf, the division newspaper.

Despite the changes, the Iraq veterans disagreed about some aspects of the current situation, such as whether it is more or less hazardous than before and whether the huge improvement in the quality of life for U.S. troops really helps boost their effectiveness.

"It's still a dangerous situation, but to be honest with you, I don't get the willies like I did last time," said Sgt. 1st Class Kelly Mann, who was based north of Baghdad at Taji in 2003-04 and now works in the capital as an adviser to the Iraqi army.

But other soldiers on their second tours said today's war is tougher than the one they remember. Sgt. 1st Class Charles Ilaoa, an American Samoan platoon sergeant operating at an outpost southwest of Baghdad called San Juan, said: "The insurgents are getting a lot better."

In his first tour, he said, it was easier to spot homemade bombs, called improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Now, he said, "the IEDs are a lot more complicated. . . . They have more sophisticated, deeply buried ones."

In 2003, it was common to come across insurgents in the open, carrying AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, said Russell, the Humvee gunner. "Now you don't see them," he said.

Even shooting has changed. Of more than a dozen soldiers asked to compare their first and second tours of duty, all agreed that the rules of engagement that govern the use of force have grown much tighter, and most said they thought the new restrictions were for the good. "It's a little bit harder. You're kind of tied down," said Ilaoa. Even so, he said, "we treat locals a lot better and have a lot better relations with them."

From Back in the Fight

Charles Thomas was wounded three times in Vietnam...and limped home questioning whether U.S. soldiers should have been sent there in the first place. Now in Iraq, he says he is unequivocally proud of his mission.

"What I'm doing now's the kind of thing we should have done more of in Vietnam," said Thomas, 59, from North Potomac, who manages development of Iraq's sewage and water systems. "The thing I regret most about my time [in Vietnam] was we were just plain fighters. We didn't go out and help people with their everyday lives."

Armed with boots-on-the-ground experience from a war many believe had devastating consequences for U.S. society [and working for private contractors working on Iraq's reconstruction], they say their goal is to ensure that Iraq, and the American soldiers fighting here, do not suffer a similar fate.

"We're all over here for pretty much one reason. There's a huge job to do, and we don't want anyone saying it didn't get done right," said Tommy Clarkson, who spent a year in Vietnam with the Army's 44th Signal Battalion and now works as a civilian spokesman in Baghdad for the Army Corps of Engineers.

There is bad news, though.

The task [they] face in helping rebuild Iraq is daunting. Thousands of projects have been completed or are underway. But reconstruction has been hobbled by an insurgency that proved deadlier than expected and by miscalculation of the degree of degradation of Iraq's infrastructure from years of neglect and the widespread looting that followed the U.S. invasion. U.S. funds allocated to the rebuilding effort are slated to be spent by the end of the year. And pressure is mounting in the United States for a substantial reduction in U.S. forces here.

Still,

"I volunteered because I thought I could help prevent another Vietnam," Holly said. "After we pulled out of there, we stuck our heads in the sand like an ostrich, said it was a mistake and we should never have gone. We basically forgot about the place. That would be the worst-case scenario here."

update
The NYT has published back-to-back articles about how the military is turning things around in Iraq. These articles are on topics similar to a couple of those in the WaPo. So are things turning around?