Gathering nations to help Iraq gain its feet is proceeding nicely:

Countries round the world continued donating millions and billions of dollars Friday to help efforts to rebuild Iraq and put it on its way toward democracy in an effort to stabilize the entire Middle East. Nudged by the United States, donors inched their way up toward the $36 billion more the World Bank says Iraq needs over four years on top of the $20 billion the United States already pledged. Friday is the last day of the two-day conference.

Most importantly, President Bush and the United Nations Development Program is wise to the loan ploy snaking its way through Congress:

Director Mark Malloch Brown also endorsed the White House drive to make all of the planned $20 billion package for next year a grant rather than half in loans, as sought by some lawmakers. President Bush says loans will make it look the United States wants to profit from Iraq's misery.

In no certain terms, the loan idea is a trojan horse. Whatever "resentment" factor it would supposedly engage is hardly as worrying as the real economic ennervation such additional debt would cause. Iraq's uninterrupted growth into a functional free market is a very close second priority to its liberal self-government. And how does a headline or twenty describing the United States eager to collect in Iraqi crude sound for campaign season? In domestic terms, Democrats could effortlessly use a betrayal of principle and the Iraqi people against the president next fall - even for cynical political gain, they'd be absolutely right. What we have in postwar Iraq are people who are the perfect definition of destitute, and the most justified prospects for a handout.

So on both matters - money and packaging thereof - the White House is still in control and succeeding. That's the best we or the Iraqis could hope for.

SIMPLE MATH: $33 billion is one hell of a lot closer to $36 billion than beans. The Bush administration has come quite a long way from the low expectations slapped onto them, no?