Can Fallujah be rebuilt?

Walton says he is looking for projects that create a "ripple effect," and as an example uses a mothballed propane factory that once had 12 workers. Marines are now fixing a generator and looted power distribution system, and he expects high demand to double the workforce. Drivers will also be needed and hired, and a supply chain will be created that Walton hopes will enable some other businesses to get running.

Fallujans angry edge has eased over time. One catalyst has been the changing political environment. Sunnis largely boycotted elections last January, and now realize it was a mistake to forfeit their voice in government.

During the mid-October constitutional referendum, Fallujans turned out to vote "no" in large numbers. They plan to come out again on Dec. 15, to maximize their voice in the new government. But they don't buy the US reasons for invading Fallujah.

"We as Sunnis have a different view. We have to resist occupiers wherever they are," says Sheikh Ahmed Sarhan Abd, deputy head of the Fallujah Sheikhs Council. "Fallujah is destroyed, and we had to protect our city from occupation. This is a reality."

Sympathy for Iraq's nationalist resistance - as opposed to Al Qaeda in Iraq, which often uses foreigners led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - means the Americans and Fallujans often agree to disagree.

"They would rather just forget what happened in November [2004]," says Lt. Col. Patrick Carroll, who speaks fluent Arabic after years of training and living in the Middle East. He is the key liaison between Fallujans and US forces.

So how are Fallujans coping with the destruction of their city?

"The Arab mentality of inshallah [if God wills it] allows them to accept more calamity," says Lt. Col. Carroll, from Shrewsbury, Mass. "They can deal with things that you or I would say: 'For the rest of our lives, we're going to hunt that guy to the ends of the earth.' [For them] what is done is done."

Indeed, Sunnis are beginning to see today that Shiite and Kurd power blocs care little for their plight.

"In Fallujah, Sunnis have changed their ideas, because they realize we are their biggest benefactors in Iraq," says Walton. "We want them to be successful, and I think they recognize that."

That means a degree of cooperation, as marines help to reestablish the small businesses that once supported 20,000 households, more than one-third of the population before the war.

"After hurricane Katrina, people went crazy when things weren't fixed after 96 hours - here you have to adjust expectations," says Lt. Col. Roy Trentalange, a reservist who is a businessman from Glenarm, Md., who is helping Iraqis build working business models. Subsidies from the former regime complicate that effort, too.

"So now you take a factory that was losing millions a year and keep it alive, so it can lose millions more?" asks Lt. Col. Trentalange. "That's a conundrum."

One year on in Fallujah, it is defined by a quotation from the British author and Arabist T.E. Lawrence that is tacked to the wall at the US military entrance to the CMOC.

"Do not try to do too much with your hands," warns the man better known as "Lawrence of Arabia." "Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not win it for them."

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