Can This War Be Won?

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In the past month U.S. commanders have detected a backlash among Iraqis against the jihadists and their tactics. Better intelligence has helped the U.S. target safe houses in and around Fallujah. An air strike two weeks ago killed Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, believed to be one of al-Zarqawi's key commanders. The Pentagon has disclosed that a team of lite special-ops soldiers, called Task Force 626, is hunting al-Zarqawi. But cracking his network will take time, fortitude and luck. To silence potential informants, al-Zarqawi and his allies have begun distributing DVDs showing the execution of suspected collaborators. In one made by nationalist guerrillas last month, two Iraqis working for U.S. companies are shown getting their throats slit and bleeding to death.

4. Kick-Start Reconstruction
While improving intelligence may help contain the insurgency, defusing its appeal to frustrated young Iraqis will require a more aggressive campaign to improve their living conditions. Kerry's most effective assault on the Administration's ineptitude is his charge that of the $18 billion appropriated by Congress for reconstruction projects, only $1 billion has actually been spent. Though unemployment has soared above 50% in parts of Iraq, the U.S. civilian administration has failed to put in effect any kind of large-scale public jobs program to wean disempowered young men away from the insurgents, who now offer as much as $3,000 for a successful attack on U.S. troops. Says Pentagon adviser Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who heads the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments: "We ought to be putting as many Iraqis to work as possible and making them as tired as possible at the end of the day."

Responsibility for dispensing reconstruction funds has shifted from the Pentagon to the State Department, which is focusing on job creation rather than major infrastructure projects. But the collapse of security has chased out many relief organizations, and scores of employees of local companies hired by the U.S. have been killed by insurgents. Little will be accomplished, U.S. officials acknowledge, until the security environment improves. Says a Western diplomat in Iraq: "You can't get reconstruction going when your contractors are being shot at."

5. Hold Real Elections
Despite Allawi's insistence that he intends to stick to the U.N.-backed plans to hold a national election for a new parliament in January, almost no one believes that the country will be pacified by then. The question is whether the U.S. should press ahead with a vote that might exclude millions of Iraqis, many of them Sunnis already inclined to view the election with skepticism. While Kerry suggested that the election might have to be postponed, the Bush Administration says it intends to meet the January deadline no matter how rampant the violence gets. "Nothing's perfect in life," Rumsfeld said.