The difficulties – and tragedies – over the weekend are a reminder that the path of war is never easy, but it’s far too early to say that the occasionally fierce Iraqi resistance necessarily implies that the Iraqi military will continue to prove a more formidable opponent than anticipated. The problem for now is that Iraqi perceptions of the regime’s durability have yet to reach tipping point. Until they do, the prospects of a quick collapse remain remote. So, on the front, the presence of the fedayeen alongside the regular Iraqi troops (threatening reprisals against those that try to flee) will often mean that those soldiers will continue to feel that it is less dangerous to fight on than to give up. Meanwhile, in the civilian areas, a side effect of the (correct) policy of carefully targeted bombings is that, for most people, life continues (very approximately speaking) as ‘normal’, at least so far as normality has come to be defined in the Iraq of the last ten years. With the electricity functioning and traffic in the street, there will, I imagine, be relatively little sense that anything has really changed or, for that matter, is about to change. Add that perception of normality to the regime’s still highly visible presence, and it will take a very brave individual to ignore its orders (let alone to rise against it), particularly with memories of the false dawn of 1991 still so fresh in Iraqi minds.