Balanced, lucid and rational assessment of the situation in Iraq from Amir Taheri. He doesn't deny the seriousness of the insurgency in Falluja and Najaf, but puts it in perspective:

'Yes, a variety of terrorist, insurgent and ordinary criminals are active in the country. Parts of Baghdad remain unsafe. Some roads, especially in the desert area bordering Jordan and Syria, are prone to attacks by bandits. And, as in many other parts of the world where criminal gangs operate, there is also some hostage-taking. But most of Iraq's 18,000 villages and 200-plus towns and cities remain as safe, if not safer, than those in some other Arab countries. The Coalition faces a problem in Fallujah. But Fallujah accounts for no more than 4 percent of Iraq's Sunni Arab community. Other major Sunni cities - Mosul, Ramadi, even Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown - remain calm.

'Those who claim that Iraq is in chaos also point to Najaf, where Muqtada al-Sadr, a 30-year-old Shiite cleric, is hiding in a number of holy shrines and mosques along with his so-called Army of the Mahdi. But talk to anyone in Najaf and you'll soon know that the overwhelming majority of the city's population wants Sadr to get the hell out. (After more than two weeks of contacts with Iraqi Shiite leaders and opinion-makers at various levels, this writer has not found anyone who supports Sadr and his shenanigans.) Sadr is abusing the old Shiite practice of "bast," which consists of taking sanctuary in a holy shrine. But Najaf is a city of 500,000 people, while Sadr's followers number 3,000 at most.'

However, Taheri then raises the more serious danger -- that the coalition will lose its nerve:

'The real question is: Will the Coalition keep its end of the bargain? Or will U.S. and British leaders, for reasons of domestic politics, lose their nerve, throw Iraq to the United Nations or some other ineffectual custodian and sacrifice the strategic goal of a democratic Middle East to tactical electoral considerations What to do in Iraq? The answer is simple: Don't lose your nerve! Yes, Iraq can become another Vietnam - not because of anything that's happening there, but because America and its allies, for reasons of domestic politics, might panic and transform victory into defeat.'

This is surely the real nightmare facing all those who support the defence against terror. Given everything that has happened, the Iraqis have remained remarkably steady. While obviously wanting to run their own country, the majority know they need the coalition to guarantee order, difficult as that has proved in certain areas. But the real danger of those appalling revelations of abuse of Iraqis by US forces (and maybe by the British) is not so much their effect on Iraqis -- after all, Ba'athists and foreign terrorists hardly need inflaming -- but on the coalition, beleaguered as it is by the anti-war movement which is milking those pictures along with every single setback for all they are worth. Taheri is right: the danger of disaster for the west in Iraq is very high, but it will be brought about not by insurgency from without but treachery and defeatism from within.