FROM DICTATORSHIP TO DEVELOPMENT

Rome wasn't built in a day, and Baghdad hasn't come back in a year. But with the anniversary of Saddam's toppling a promise emerges: Ordinary life -- despite the continuing spasms of terrorism -- may be thinkable again | Mindy Belz

On a clear day the civilian flights into Baghdad seem almost to hover over the runway before corkscrewing down to land. On descent, defense contractors, relief workers, and others onboard gain stomach-churning, concentric views of the landscape they have come to master. It's a baked-clay desert stretching endlessly to the horizon, save for three palace compounds visible from the air near the runways. Icons to Saddam's self-absorption, they are typical of the 70 or so he built around Iraq -- octagonal atria, marble expanses, vast halls and ramparts surrounded by lakes and moats.

As the sheer enormity of each complex comes gradually into view, aid workers see perhaps the first real evidence of the work cut out for them. War didn't destroy this country but Saddam Hussein did.