We're not in Kansas anymore!(What Next In Iraq?)

After six weeks of delays and legitimate fear, we sent 17 Iraqi men and women, with four Lebanese supervisors, into Iraq to poll 600 people about the future, the American presence, and the kind of government they preferred. The process was as fascinating as the results.

Since Baghdad was unsafe in mid August, we chose four metropolitan areas, which we felt could give us the right cross-section of the Iraqi population. Basra in the south is Iraq's second largest city and mainly Shiite in composition. Al Ramadi, just 35 miles west of Baghdad, is mainly Sunni. Kirkuk in the northeast has mainly a Kurd and Turkoman population, and Mosul in the northwest includes both Sunnis and Christians.

Every effort was made to conduct random interviews among women in their households and men in public places. Bowing to custom, women interviewed women and men interviewed men. At all times, the groups were escorted by field supervisors and drivers.

Good thing, because the interviewers were caught in a crossfire in Al Ramadi during an attack on a military convoy. One of our supervisors was seized by Kurdish forces in Kirkuk and was not released until a payment of money and several calls to local contacts. The team in Basra was summoned by religious figures and questioned about the purpose of the study. And one group was chased by an unidentified car. Checkpoints were everywhere.

But we obtained sobering information from those polled, Iraqis are hopeful: Seven in ten say that Iraq will be a better country five years from now. The same percentage says that they themselves will be better off in five years. But two of three tell us that rebuilding Iraq politically will be harder than rebuilding it economically.

They are not as sanguine about democracy. About two in five say "democracy can work in Iraq," while a slight majority agree that "democracy is a Western way of doing things and it will not work here." Shiites--who suffered the most under the regime of Saddam Hussein and are the best organized politically in Iraq--are more evenly split about democracy, while Sunnis ...