IRAQ The New Republic of the Mid-East

And while American troops have captured stockpiles of artillery shells from Mr. Hussein’s days, insurgents have adapted, building bombs from cheap materials like fertilizer and cocoa.

That it took such force to accomplish seemed mitigated, at least somewhat, by the precision of the strikes, with only isolated instances, during the 19 days before American troops reached Baghdad, of errant missiles killing innocent civilians. Early one morning, I went to the smoking wreckage of the city’s central telephone exchange, only to find patients from Iraq’s main heart hospital, 150 feet away, across a narrow lane, uninjured, out in the garden in their pajamas watching the commotion.