Maybe the most amazing thing about all of this is how very normal it sounds to us: - Sixteen provincial councils have been established, along with 78 district councils, 192 city or sub-district councils, and 392 neighborhood councils. - Health-care spending in Iraq has increased some 30 times over prewar levels. Between June 2003 and April 2004, more than 3 million children under five were vaccinated against diseases. A U.S. grant to the Iraqi Nursing Association will go toward training more nurses and buying uniforms, bed linens and nurses' kits. - The new Iraqi dinar has been stable, and its value has risen by 25 percent over last fall, when the conversion was under way. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apmideast_story.asp?category=1107&slug=Iraq Statistics