Andrew Sullivan lightens his scorn against the administration with a slight withdrawal, but nevertheless strikes an odd gun-control note, believing that a confiscation of weapons in Iraq would necessarily end the activity of armed louts. Arsenals and arbitrary caches, of course, must not remain bare to acquisition. But as with any disarmament, those most affected will be law-abiding citizens who need guns the most.

Meanwhile, David Frum gives us the words we need, right in line with what I've been pounding home for the better part of a week, knocking out Sullivan's baying like Joe Lewis might smack a stroppy John McEnroe:

I sometimes wish there were a futures market in conventional wisdom. If so, I’d see that the market in Iraq reconstruction pessimism has now topped. (The only reason to think that it might have a little further to go is that R.W. Apple has not yet published his piece on the front page of the New York Times pronouncing the reconstruction doomed.)

Next wave of journalistic reports: The US Army is pretty good at getting the lights back on and fixing things – Iraqis turn out not to be much interested in creating a Shi’ite theocracy like Iran’s – and do, surprise, surprise, show considerable interest in the peace and development message of Ahmed Chalabi and Kanan Makiya.

In the first two years of Japan's Occupation, the people were highly interested in the extremism of active Socialism and Communism. As life slowly began to stabilize, however, their interest in these tickets to slavery exsiccated rather quickly. No one with even a modicum of understanding of bringing a society up from ruins - physical or sociological - should expect major, solid improvements in the countrywide situation until this fall or winter. Considering that, keep your expectations trained on the myriad tiny steps leading up to those triumphs.