Now as to the behavior of the soldiers: occupations always corrupt the occupiers.

And if you look at the experience of Turkey, for example, where the modern Islamists are in power and are doing fine - this is very good. Because democracy is not possible in the Muslim world without bringing in the Islamists or part of the Islamists who hate us now into these governments.

The American official was trying to talk about aid and development projects and finally a local tribal chief got up and said, "Even if you turn our country into heaven, we don't want it from you. Just leave us."

Because no matter how much money we spend there [in Iraq], as long as the people there see this money as... as assistance that is unwelcome, as long as they continue to be humiliated in their own country by us... I mean, the future looked bleak, and the future after that was in fact very bleak.

The other problem is that the priority of many soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan is operational security: not getting killed. Now that is a very valid priority, but it has to be balanced against many other priorities, especially not killing too many locals in the process.

I think in Baghdad, any westerner, journalist or not, has a big dollar sign on his or her forehead. So, first and foremost, you are a ticket to unimaginable wealth. And that makes any trips out of the safe zones very risky.

But in Afghanistan, the general rule was that since you were fighting the Taliban, which was not a lawful government force, the Geneva Conventions did not apply. And that led to a lot of excesses in Afghanistan, excesses like Abu Ghraib that were already well-publicized.