Just so it's understood, the Near East's jihadists and Islamist kooks mean to defend the totalitarian establishment in Iraq and not, by any means, the Iraqis themselves:

Two Saudis arrested after the Najaf attack in Iraq that killed leading Shiite cleric Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim were picked up after sending an e-mail saying "mission accomplished: the dog is dead," The Times reported today quoting a source close to the Iraqi inquiry.

The men were grabbed by a crowd and taken to the nearest police station after being seen sending the e-mail from an Internet cafe, the source said.

...The two suspects apparently attracted the attention of the son of the cafe owner after having "offered a larger than usual sum of money to use a computer," the British daily said.

This is the silver lining. The Iraqis, like any human beings, know freedom by instinct. The finer points of liberty will take years for them, of course - but individual rights were always connate and now, tangible. And Iraqis are not about to lose it all to the deranged, "practicing" cousins of their former oppressor. Threaten their first chance at normal life in decades? Quit babbling about the virgins somebody promised you: tell it to the beak.

It was while watching footage of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenant gloating over the destruction of the World Trade Center nearly a year ago - "More dead than we anticipated" or something to that demonic effect - that I realized how completely devoid of strategy or ethos, however convoluted, these men are. It isn't about a god; nor is it about culture. While many of their fanatic followers are drawn into terrorism to desperately seek an ideologically charged escape from despair and poverty, the terror masters - as Ledeen calls them - want baser things. If they sought to establish a world order, they wouldn't indiscriminately butcher people across borders and loyalties; Bali, Riyadh, Baghdad, Najaf. No, they just want to kill and consume. They wouldn't risk uniting humanity, however tenuous that alliance was.

I don't consider authoritarians bound by a "bestial will" for nothing. The Islamofascists are horribly dangerous; but also self-destructive fools. If this continues, they'll soon make rugged anti-terrorists out of the Iraqis.

UPDATE: Our friendship strengthens. The United States is more than willing to apply the strength of its intelligence and enforcement agencies to the success of democratic Iraq - and the Iraqis understand that.