Many press agencies are skewing the administrative transfer of Iraq's Ministry of Health from the Coalition Provisional Authority to the Iraqi public as some sort of failure. Robert Alt tells us why this is a victory:

That the Ministry of Health should be the first of the 26 public ministries to return to Iraqi control is quite an accomplishment, especially when you consider its dilapidated status just one year ago. Years of neglect had taken their toll. Maintenance was unheard of under Saddam, leaving only 35 percent of the equipment in hospitals operable. Doctors and medical students were unable to view medical journals online because of government policies that made owning a satellite dish a crime punishable by the state. And to add insult to injury, when Jim Haveman, the senior Coalition adviser, and Dr. Kudair Abbas, the Iraqi minister of health, arrived last year, the ministry building itself was completely looted. It is therefore not surprising to learn that Iraqis had come to expect little in the way of medical care.

What a difference a year makes! Saddam only provided $16 million for health care in his 2002 budget, a wretchedly low sum that should again prompt questions about how the Oil-for-United-Nations-Cronies — I mean, Oil-for-Food — program was operated. In FY 2004, however, the health budget received an enormous 60-fold increase, providing $948 million for 26 million Iraqis. At the end of the war, Iraq possessed only 300 tons of pharmaceuticals on hand. Compare this to the 35,000 tons of drugs distributed this year alone, a total that notably includes 30 million doses of children's vaccinations.

In order to qualify for transfer of authority, the Ministry of Health had to meet a number of criteria, including developing short and long-term strategic plans, establishing a budget, demonstrating a sound management system, and implementing a system of checks and balances to prevent corruption. Given the state of the ministry he inherited, these are accomplishments for which Minister of Health Abbas should be proud. And clearly he is. On Sunday, Dr. Abbas emphasized his belief that the Coalition would not have transferred power unless he and his staff had demonstrated that they were ready to exercise it. This approval clearly meant a great deal to him. But the transition was also important to him because it meant that the Coalition had not only kept its word regarding the transition of power, but had actually delivered early on its promise. Given how the press often portrays Coalition occupation, it may surprise some to hear Dr. Abbas describing his time working with Jim Haveman and the Americans as "[o]ne of the nicest things in [his] life." He summed up his feelings by saying that he now has good friends in America.

There's a tragedy we can find in news reporting from Iraq: far too much of it is lacking in detail. Journalists make broad assumptions as a matter of style. Terrorism is constantly used for dialectic ripostes to stated Allied intentions and, by way of subtle omission, often attributed to Iraqis as a whole. Little victories that one can find on a daily basis are buried under several paragraphs. In Alt's piece, we can see that the more detail to be found in a story, the more likely that story will depict an unprecedented success of free men and women against tall odds.