Glad you got that out of your system.
I agree, it's been blown out of proportion, but that's the media for you. God forbid they'd give us some good news...
But making Iraq glow isn't the solution.
In military terms, there are civilians (the population) then there are "legitimate targets", which is pretty much anything that is of military interest. War has evolved to seperate the two, as much as possible. WW2 bombing raids were notoriously innacurate, and that was just 50+ years ago.
The idea is that no matter who you are, you cannot kill civilians, period. We're supposed to be past this kind of nonsense.
What Iraq has revealed is that some of the population is still fanatic, and don't abide by this kind of civilized concept of war: anybody's and everything is a target.
So we have to expand our "civilized" concept of war to include a "cultural adjustment". Iraq is Iraq, and we can't impose a form of government unilateraly: we have to work with them to figure out which type of government works best for them, and all the steps and transitions to get there.
Iraq could be an economic force in the middle east, if it gets its act together.
My $0.02.