Morale, Morals, Mortality
The US marines are suffering from low morale (according to the NY Times) and now the CS Monitor. Why the low morale? Well, the army marines have gone from warriors to demonstration police/civil administrators....also, the troops are being fired upon by saddam's guerrillas. not good.

why else? well they've been on duty for a while...so...the solutions suggested by an armchair general?

1. Bigger Budgets: 2.4 B. earmarked for reconstruction this year is low. Very low. They need that power, electricity etc. up pronto. No more "we're letting the iraqis do it themselves" BS. Get a company who can get this stuff done in a week. do it fast, pay the company for their time. get it done.

2. Change the guard. Get some professional bureaucrats in their to run the place and let the soldiers do soldiering. And get some fresh blood in there.

3. you have to find saddam. like yesterday. find and destroy. This guy probably has a massive entourage w/ SUV's humming around baghdad. Incognito is not going to be easy. what's the holdup here? The intelligence agencies never seem to have enough eyes on the ground. this relying on drones, etc to do the real work is ridiculous. pay some informers, pay somebody on the inside, whatever. His life is giving strength to the soldiers who disappeared into the countryside and now battle ceaselessly through guerilla style fighting.

I realize this is just extremely naive to think i'd have any kind of superior thoughts over the generals who run the place or bremer, but the feel good exercise of having underperforming iraqi civilians put the place back together is not worth it. just get a real company in there to get the job done. that would win hearts and minds a lot faster.