Islamofascists in Iraq were dealt another blow:

Iraqi police forces have detained Umar Baziyani, an associate of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, U.S. Central Command announced Friday. Baziyani is known to have ties to several extremist terrorist groups in Iraq and is believed to be responsible for the death and injury of scores of innocent Iraqi citizens, according to Centcom. Authorities say Baziyani is also wanted in connection with anti-coalition activities.

Baziyani was detained on May 30 in Baghdad, according to Centcom. He's providing information to coalition forces.

"His capture removes one of al-Zarqawi’s most valuable officers from his network," according to the Centcom statement.

Most important in this report is the fact that it was the Iraqi police who nabbed Baziyani. Though the phrase "Iraqi face" has been overused to the point of use as an excuse for American follow-through, Iraq's autonomy and definition as a democracy depends upon the establishment of a common good, empowered by the people to bear arms. In Iraq's unfinished and trying state, good advice is heard stateside less often than bad.

One of the most resilient — but poorly reasoned — remonstrations since the occupation began last April has been for the retention of the Iraqi army. Saddam's army: the fragmented, internecine force made up of everyone from unwilling conscripts to knuckleheaded thugs to crossover Islamist terrorists, with the sole purpose of sustaining Ba'athist reign through external conquest and the repression of Iraq's population. It doesn't take a military expert to divine how fundamental a country's authoritarian culture is to its armed forces: in Iraq, military structure, operation and morale all ran on the currency of mutual fear and distrust.

Beyond function, Saddam's military served well as a terrifying symbol of the dictator's power and brutality. Even if keeping the army weren't a betrayal of principle, it would be an offense to natural allies. Like the Ba'ath Party's ubiquity, the army's continued existence implied Saddam's permanence: one need not look beyond the nervous reaction from Shiites and Kurds at the mere sight of former Republican Guard General Jassim Mohammed Saleh in Fallujah before the Marines got wise and yanked him. Cultural repercussions of retention are a variable we will never, thankfully, know.

The military was no more than the sum of its parts. In Saddam's uniform, the murderous succeeded and the unwilling were cannibalized. Retraining military-aged men in Iraq to protect and serve, rather than torment, civilians — a role agreed upon by proponents and opponents alike — would have required the standing army's complete disassembling, from hierarchy to ethos, effectively "disbanding" it anyway.

Some retention proponents claim, as Bill O'Reilly loudly did on television last night, that the Bush administration's refusal to co-opt Saddam's war machine is directly responsible for the Ba'athist insurgency centered in the Sunni Triangle and concentrated in Fallujah. But when the number of assailants — including Syrians, Saudis, al Qaeda and other terrorists — is believed less than a couple thousand or more, and Saddam's forces were estimated before the campaign at half a million, how can anyone tell that the "dead-enders" disrupting Iraq's democratization today would have acted any differently if invited to keep their old uniforms?

What's both tragic and worth a chuckle — laughter to offset the tragedy — is that American command is recruiting former army soldiers. But it's done under American rules:

U.S. military advisers are forming an all-Iraqi counterinsurgency force and training it in guerrilla tactics like ambushing trucks and hiding alongside the road camouflaged as bushes. The new force, called the Iraqi National Task Force, is the most ambitious effort yet to fight the uprising using Iraqis, and it already has 1,000 soldiers with plans to grow to 7,000.

It is being created as a response to the refusal of some regular Iraqi soldiers to face insurgents in Fallujah two months ago. That breakdown culminated in a tense standoff on an airfield with eight U.S. Marines surrounded by an angry group of 200 armed Iraqis who refused to board helicopters.

"Basically, that scene was the trigger," said Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, the senior military adviser in charge of training Iraqi security forces. "It was our fault. We tried to send the Iraqi army into Fallujah before they were ready, and they pushed back. After that, we realized we needed a force that was specially designed to fight in urban areas and ready to fight fellow Iraqis."

The general said that all soldiers who volunteered for the task force had to agree to a mission statement pledging they will fight terrorists, former elements of Saddam Hussein's regime and insurgents within Iraq. Some of the soldiers take an oath; others make a more informal commitment to their commanders.

Nor can it be said that Iraqis are invisible in the countrywide strategy:

U.S. advisers say they are pleased with the progress. The original goal for the police force was 85,000 officers; 92,000 have been hired. The border patrol is fully staffed at 17,000 officers, and so is the facility protection services at 74,000 officers. The civil defense corps is at 25,000, with another 15,000 soldiers to go. The army is the furthest from its goal, with 7,000 soldiers of the 35,000 intended.

This developing story is one of trial and error — patience. (Iraqi courage never fails to astound, such numbers in spite of so many terrorist attacks against recruits.) Those who still harangue the dissolution of Saddam's army can be commended for wishing the perfect not to be made an enemy of the better. But in Iraq's uneasy circumstances, the better shouldn't be made an enemy of the expedient.