We're at an advantage taking the most popular news items from Iraq — military strikes, cowardly acts by terrorists and Allied/Iraqi casualties — not so much as bad news as war news. If anyone on the left or right had thought that Iraq's democratization would end up something other than the "difficult" task described by President Bush in his finest postwar hour, it was not to be. A self-proclaimed optimist, I nevertheless see the country's security normalizing not long before eighteen months to two years. Iraq is a beachhead the size of California; every representative of the region's despotic establishment, mortified by the prospect of a democracy in their midst, are throwing every last bit of weight into damming the wellspring of freedom. The occupation has been hurried in some respects to America's experiences in Europe and Japan but far more advanced in others (no famine, as in 1945-1946 Japan; no two-year lull before organized reconstruction, as in Germany). It is made up of two campaigns and its results are mixed, as they only could be, only now caught in the jaws of the moment; of impatience, ignorance of history and unrealistic expectations. I find less frustrating the ossified cynicism of the chattering classes than despair from would-be supporters of the second chapter of the greatest act of American sacrifice since the Second World War. They misplace a desire for peace with one for placidity; every time a car explodes, a soldier falls or an unarmed man is mutilated, our light-hearted fellow citizens risk moving one step closer to panic — often, of course, after they've read an editorial-ridden report in a mainstream press outlet.

But there it is, more tender than you may have thought a moment before, the day when we were reintroduced to the latest generation of rapacious, hateful men and reminded that hiding beneath the covers doesn't make monsters go away. If you pay attention, the more complicated the news becomes, the simpler and clearer the truth: our enemies will do everything that is unexpected, unthinkable and unconscionable to us until they have all been destroyed, by force or by the common good of free society.

Iraq moves forward, slowly; inexorably but sometimes imperceptably and, two months into the second year, often painfully.

Just hours after the American military dropped fifteen-hundred pounds of high explosive onto a suspected terrorist safehouse in the troubled city of Fallujah, some journalists were flocking to the side of the story disseminated by the least trustworthy. Members of the ad hoc Fallujah Brigade, a valiant crossover effort by Marines with uncertain dividends, gave us the familiar "women and children, all innocent" claim. Was it another "wedding party," that midnight jamboree with automatic weapons, satellite communications and enough street disguises for a football team? Who cares? For some printshops, it was worth a pint of sweat on Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt's brow.

But then some reassurances of American rightness have come from Baghdad, in fact the fore of a larger gesture. Iraqi officials have repudiated the Fallujah Brigade's "nothing here" call:

A day after an American air strike destroyed six homes in the flash-point city of Fallujah, a senior Iraqi official said Sunday that 23 of 26 people killed in the attack were foreign terrorists, including men from Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, The New York Times reported. ...U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said today that the weekend airstrikes in Fallujah killed key figures in the network of suspected terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

And if the Brigade's gone more slippery than the Marines had hoped, cobbled-together forces are not the future of Iraq's security:

The prime minister of Iraq's interim government announced organizational changes for the country's security forces, along with a plan for taking on Iraq's enemies, at a June 20 Baghdad news conference.

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said his government is committed to confronting the threats it faces when sovereignty transfers to the Iraqi people June 30. He pointed out the continued presence of sabotage elements in Iraq, including those from Saddam's former regime and foreign elements.

...The Iraqi prime minister said many threats come from outside Iraq. "This is why the border forces, the customs and the employees of the immigration department will studiously seek to secure our protracted borders," he pointed out. "They will use advanced technology to confront the terrorists, smugglers, illegal immigration, and the ongoing smuggling operations. The Iraqi police forces will swiftly intervene with the help of the expert sons of our armed forces of whom we are proud."

Many of these forces already are in position, he added, and "will be called to intervene under the command of the army and with its cooperation."

The list of forces is impressive for a year under constant pressure from Islamofascists. (As an aside note Allawi, quite on the same page in regards to the threat from Iraq's neighbors.) The Iraqi army has been reconstituted with postwar percepts, instructed in American and Western concepts of the democratic soldier. As the fashionable "Iraqi face" appears, even more so when Iraqis themselves will be inspiring men of fighting age to defend a new country, hopefully the wistful obsession with fully retaining Saddam's stormtroopers can die the ignoble death of a dangerously silly idea.

Meanwhile, four Marines die in Ramadi; dozens of leaders and good men across Iraq are at or near the top of hit lists; poor, young idiots are building bombs to slaughter the innocent. Wretchard the Cat declares the enemy's transition offensive underway, an escalation whose size and shape we can't be sure of, but one we know will almost certainly be dirty and desperate. The Iraqis, alongside our own bravest, will have their work cut out for them. So we buckle down, say a prayer and prepare for more war news.