Wretchard at the Belmont Club is invaluable this morning, tying half a dozen news narratives into a single, resoundingly positive evaluation of the war. He also comes close to predicting an autumn foreign policy debate strikingly similar to the one sealing Saddam Hussein's fate in 2002 — a discussion for which President Bush's opponents in the Democratic Party were utterly unprepared and unwilling, providing an upset midterm victory for the Republicans. Wretchard also comments on the downward spiral of leftism. In writing he references John Burns, a reporter whose New York Times work I excerpted three days ago for a perspective on the Khomeinist-backed insurgency's slow annihilation. In that same entry, I noted another news report quoting Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi as inviting Muqtada al-Sadr to participate in the country's January elections. "Is it an 'olive branch' as described — or a polite ultimatum?" I asked. According to some sources of Burns', it may have been a subtle but necessary political gobo:

[S]ome American military officers have said that this presentation of the situation was a convenient fiction, propagated by the Allawi government and the American command to allow their forces to hunt down as many of Mr. Sadr's fighters as possible while exempting Mr. Sadr from any deliberate attack.

Burns reports that American troops were given explicit permission to battle in the ancient Najaf cemetary, a site defiled by the extremists who claim protection under its inviolability; and may finally clear out the hypocritically forbidden Imam Ali Shrine, a place that, like the cemetary, is described as off-limits to non-Muslims in American uniforms but acceptable to non-Muslims in black, jihad jumpsuits who claim to be on the side of God.

Retired Lt. General Thomas McInerney reiterated last night on Special Report with Brit Hume that the southern violence was guided by the hand of Iran, Muqtada al-Sadr the Tehran mullahs' patsy. It's hardly conjecture that if al-Sadr were put down, his former employers would find another ambitious thug to command native criminals and foreign terrorists: gangs in the south are a proxy to our dedicated enemy in the war on terror, Iran. As written here nearly a year ago and maintained by scholar Michael Ledeen since the beginning of time, "The security of Iraq and Afghanistan depends largely on disrupting the ability of hostile neighbors to send men, money or equipment for destabilization efforts." Iraq is a perfect reflection of the war against authoritarians, a free society beset by the very enemies America must face and defeat — al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Syrian and Iranian governments — before victory can be claimed.

Thankfully, Belmont Club has good news on that, too. (Note how the leftist Guardian bristles at the thought of wrecking a totalitarian regime.)

IRAN, NOT SO FAR AWAY: Iraqi Interim Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan again accuses Iran of inciting violence, the invasion of cowards.

IRAQIS, ENEMIES OF TERRORISM: Muqtada al-Sadr? Regular Iraqis hate the man's guts. And they want his little rebellion-in-a-box shut down. Omar has more.