Via today's AP: "Bodies lie in the street after suicide bomb attack in Karbala Iraq in this image taken from TV Thursday Jan. 5, 2006"

From "U.S. Has End in Sight on Iraq Rebuilding", the Washington Post, January 2, 2006:

U.S. officials say comparatively minor sabotage to distribution systems is keeping Iraqis from seeing the gains from scores of projects to increase electricity generation and oil production. To showcase a rebuilt school or government building, meanwhile, is to invite insurgents to bomb it.

If 2006 brings political stability and an easing of the insurgency, Americans say, the distribution systems can be fairly easily repaired.

"The good news is this investment is not in any way lost; they're there," said Dan Speckhard, the director of the U.S. reconstruction management office in Iraq. "They will pay off, they will be felt, if not this month, then six months down the road."

Your concerns will be addressed, people...a mere six months down the potholed, blood-spattered, bomb-shellacked road.