Michael Ledeen gives the latest developments in Najaf — namely, a reported standing down of Muqtada al-Sadr — a positive assessment. Mostly. But enough.

A REAL COWARD: That stand-down was typical Mookie, with the phony cleric trying to wriggle his way out almost immediately. Baghdad responded by resuming the countdown to endgame, and al-Sadr's men quickly started talking existentialism. As long as the Mahdi gang is in operation, the people of Najaf and other southern locales suffer. Let's end this.

Most impressive is the headline, "Iraq Warns al-Sadr to Surrender, or Else." Iraq. Not "interim authority," nor "Coalition," nor "occupation." Iraq, determined to fight Iran's terrorist agent.

Mohammed serves his own round of good news from Iraq, the kind the left sniffs at, including this powerful anecdote of former dictatorship meeting former dictatorship:

The Japanese invited some doctors and administrative health officials to visit Japan and you can imagine the reaction and impressions those Iraqis showed when the returned from Japan; they were in a state of shock from the civilization out there and they came back with hope, dreams and frustration too; we’ve got a long way to walk and a lot of work to do before we can catch up with the civilized world.

And you will, Mohammed. Read the rest.

Ali and Mohammed Fadhil, two of the three brothers who co-author one of my favorite Iraqi weblogs are translating their inspiration and vision into action by running for the Iraqi National Assembly. Joining the Iraqi Pro-Democracy Party, Ali and Mohammed each offer a press statement. Says Ali:

We believe that we represent an important segment of the Iraqi people that was never organized before under any category as a result of the oppression of the past regime. Now this segment has come to see the necessity to contribute to the building of a new Iraq in a way that is entirely different from the old ways that are still dominant in the Middle East and that are governed by religious fanaticism and pan-Arab nationalism.

We see that remaining silent is not an option in our battle towards democracy and freedom and that everyone who seeks a better future should take part in this battle.

Easily the best news of the day — and the Fadhil brothers are among many eager to serve Iraq's democratic future. How will the left, from politicians to intellectuals to professional protesters, react? Probably as if nothing like this — young men in foreign lands risking their lives by standing up for the common good, a real protest generation — is even happening. Presidential candidate John Kerry has yet to devote two minutes of a speech to the gains made by Iraqis and Afghans in spite of so many obstacles. His supporters are too busy denouncing American use of force to liberate millions and keep them safe through the permanent change of polity. It's events like these that expose leftism for a cynical, hopeless half-religion, an exercise in denial: praying to generic idols of "peace" and "diplomacy" with absolutely no understanding of how to actually make them reality, denying any relationship of their realization to democratic assertion or the individual.

If President Bush wanted to make a statement in this election season few would forget, the Republican Party would fly the three Fadhil brothers in for stage-time at the National Convention. Then again, Ali and Mohammed may come to the United States soon enough, as representatives of a democratic Iraq. Godspeed, gentlemen.

DESPOTAPHILIA: Craig Brett reminds us that the left's intersection with authoritarianism is not just a hypothesis.

Central Command's latest:

Multi-National Forces continue to safeguard the citizens of Najaf at the request of the Iraqi Prime Minister. They are assisting Iraqi police with vehicle checkpoints around the city and continue to defend themselves against sporadic attacks by the Muqtada Militia. The militia is using the cemetery, holy sites and schools in Najaf as bases for operations. The Multi-National Forces have responded to these attacks taking extreme care not to damage the Imam Ali Shrine or any other holy sites.

The Iraqi security force and Multi-National Force mission remains to restore security and return rule of law to Najaf.

Whether or not that can be accomplished from a defensive posture remains to be seen.

THUGS: Muqtada al-Sadr's roving bands have reportedly threatened the sickly, 80-year-old father of Najaf's police chief. And where, one wonders, is the officially broadcast Near East outrage over the innocents terrorized by the Mahdi gang?

The forces of terror won't win:

For the third time in two weeks, Iraqi and U.S. engineers have brought more electricity to the people of Iraq by commissioning a power plant in Southern Iraq. The 52 Megawatt generator at the Khor Az Zubayr Power Plant, located 40 kilometers south of Basrah, fired for the first time today, bringing enough power on line to service 156,000 Iraqi homes.

“This is a very important step in overcoming the power shortage across the country,” said Raad Shalal, a senior Iraq Ministry of Electricity official. “This will help us reach our goal of increasing power for the country.”

Meanwhile, more evidence points to Saddam's permanent outsourcing of WMD equipment and material in early 2003.

AND: Michael Ledeen lays out the facts.

In a recent e-mail I made an observation: there is an incredible amount of noise to excise from most news reports, particularly those on the fluid situation in Najaf. Troll up to Google News. Some articles are splattered with editorial phrases and leftist code; others handpick Iraqi and foreign kooks as their interviewees. Headlines are atrocious, at once serving to catch the eye at the expense of accuracy. Worse, a great many follow the narrative describing random violence "breaking out" among morally equalized parties, an irresponsible technique I noted four months ago. While I appreciate the practice in objective reading and cross-reference, I wish journalists could be a little bit less opaque.

The Washington Post reports that Iraqi elite and special forces are filing into Najaf, and the Imam Ali Shrine is their target:

"The army will be deployed now" to the city, where U.S. forces have been fighting the militia, said Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. Units of the new Iraqi army would immediately prepare for an offensive aimed at evicting al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army from the shrine of Imam Ali, a sacred site the militia has used as a refuge, he said.

...One battalion of Iraqi commandos is already in the city. The unit, previously known as the 36th Battalion, was trained by U.S. Special Forces and fought alongside U.S. forces in Fallujah in April. Another Iraqi battalion, trained by the regular army, refused to fight. The commando unit raided a mosque in Kufa this week, supported by a Marine unit that was kept at a distance.

Granted, the infamous Rajiv Chandrasekaran contributed to this story, but one might hope that the Post can get straight the overwhelmingly shared desire to put an end to terrorist activity. The anonymous quote "Everyone wants to go ahead and finish this" is reassuring to our understanding of both the Post's veracity and the situation itself. As Alaa makes clear — intensely, and rightfully so — Iraqi people suffer precisely because evil men sow strife and unrest, committing violence and intimidation. They remain couched in relative safety and hope precisely because brave soldiers from within their borders and without take up arms against terrorists and outlaws. They want their leaders and allies to go the hell ahead and finish this.

THE IRAQI STREET: Ali give his analysis of Muqtada al-Sadr's apparent support and its underlying weaknesses.

EVIL BY ANY OTHER NAME: News agencies continue to fail to impress, framing the dichotemy of Baghdad's democratic conference and the continuing presence of anti-democratic forces in the country as a juxtaposition of "peace" and "violence" — which, of course, inculcates the idea of Allied and Iraqi government troops as equal partners with terrorists in senseless killing. The Christian Science Monitor comes close to getting it right, but still stops well short of abandoning the amoral language we find in a lot of today's reports from Iraq. The question of who is provoking whom is obvious — it's the lunatics firing mortars into crowded streets — but only through implication of events. This is nothing new: Misunderstanding evil's tirelessness leads smart fools to coin phrases like "cycle of violence," where the only solution is a juvenile fantasy of spontaneous peace, rather than the physical victory of peaceable men whose swords started out as plowshares. We're lucky the words of General Peter Chiarelli even made it into print:

We take no action unless we are fired upon. I can cite you example after example where we did not engage when forces fired upon us because to do so would have caused civilian casualties. I might add our enemy does not do the same.

There is a such thing as killing a man without malice. Can you ever get that from page A-3? Frustrating as the disconnect is, it helps to explain the relativist left's inability to cope with the war. They cannot accept that certain people will delight in consuming them.

DON'T REPORT IF YOU CAN'T: Ask and ye shall receive.

Talks between Muqtada al-Sadr's henchmen and the Iraqi government, a farce or feint best described by Wretchard here, have "broken down." Or perhaps the brick refused to fly. Either way, the Iraqi government — via their erstwhile interlocuter, national security advisor Mowaffaq al-Rubaie — has announced that the vise will continue to tighten, peaceful alternatives exhausted. Another public announcement comes from the ever-candid Defense Minister Hazem al-Shaalan:

The operations are continuing in the city and will continue until the militia is forced to withdraw out of the city or they surrender to Iraqi authorities and benefit from the amnesty law which [was] announced by the prime minister.

We'll soon see if victory over Iran's patsy, and only that, will end the action.

Touching, yes, but more revealing than anything:

Tankers from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (search) knew that intelligence was key to battling the enemy. Capt. Chad Roehrman was at a checkpoint when he thought another dodgy informant walked up.

"One of my guys came to me and said, 'Hey, sir, we got another boy who says he has information,'" he said. What the boy had was information on a well-connected cell of 40 fighters whose leader was a former officer in Saddam Hussein's army. He was also the boy's father.

...After the bust the boy couldn't go home so he moved in with the soldiers. They gave him the nickname "Steve-O" and a bunk right next to theirs.

Buried with the last generation is the old way of life. Young Iraqis are the greatest hope for their own country as well as ours; unspoiled by cynicism and propaganda, eager to make the best friends the impoverished and oppressed could ever know. We owe them as much as they might think they owe us — no, far more.

For the latest in Najaf and other places in Iraq — including a warning to wait until information becomes available before jumping to conclusions — Belmont Club is this morning's required reading.

IT GOES ON: News reports are chortling about roughly two hundredths of one percent of Iraq's population in arms over the Allied-Iraqi offensive against Muqtada al-Sadr and his armed gangs. Facts emerging from other reports, however, indicate that regardless of what ratched-down tactics used by joint forces, "80 percent" of Najaf is free of Mahdi thugs, Allied casualties have been extremely low while enemy loss of life high, and the Imam Ali Shrine remains surrounded.

NO NEGOTIATIONS, EXCEPT FOR NEGOTIATIONS: Diminishing al-Sadr in May succeeded in demonstrating that mainstream Iraqis had no interest in his violent mayhem. With the threat of civil war nonexistent, the Mahdi gangs simply represent a threat to the Iraqi government. So why the resuscitation? Zeyad is not happy, and hardly the only one. The only benefit I can see — very typically, too — is that it works into a strategy about which I read this morning: the Bush administration has decided to keep al-Sadr in a box but refrain from killing him, recognizing that an equally opportunistic twerp will take the phony cleric's place. Instead the Allies will concentrate on the source of destabilization. And that source is Iran. I would prefer to see Najaf free of Iranian-backed thugs today. But those who see the larger picture may be planning differently because of it.

Heroism and success in Iraq:

Joint Iraqi Police Service, Iraqi National Guard, and U.S. Special Forces operations in Al Kut, Aug. 11, against Mehdi Militiamen may have broken the back of anti-Iraqi forces in the city, according to the city's governor.

...The fighting culminated in one area when Iraqi guardsmen and police launched an assault across the Tigris River in a small boat under machinegun fire and retook a key bridge in the city. Iraqi forces continue to hold the bridge.

...One MNF serviceman was reported injured in the fight and evacuated after briefly returning to the action. Iraqi forces were fighting side-by-side with the MNF forces in the area.

The Iraqis are learning — they'll be able to protect the country by themselves soon enough.

UNPOPULAR UPRISING: Mohammed: "Everyone here is waiting for the final attack and the end of this crisis. Most people I met are waiting for the moment when they can see Muqtada and his deputies in handcuffs, those criminals have been given a chance they didn't deserve in the first place."