Everybody enjoyed the Fourth of July. Everybody.

If Iraq deserves its own independence day for single reason, it's because its people understand the day's spirit. Via Clifford May, the Iraq-America Freedom Alliance makes its internet debut, introducing itself as "a coalition of Americans and Iraqis committed to fostering goodwill between our nations and winning the war on terror." And: Friday, I noted a news report detailing Iraq's looming first victory in the culture war. Via Craig Brett, Iraq's declared defense in the physical war:

The new Iraqi government will publish damning evidence this week linking foreign powers, including Iran and Syria, to the Muslim extremists and loyalists of the former regime who launched a bloody rebellion after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister, told The Telegraph that the interim government had gathered intelligence detailing the support provided to insurgent groups by some neighbouring nations.

He even indicated that Iraq might not oppose attacks by American troops based in Iraq on neighbouring states if they were backing the insurgents.

"Since we started to look at the security situation, we have seen how foreign governments have been helping terrorists," said Mr Zebari. "Why they are doing it we cannot say, but we know where the support is coming from. We have plans to put this before the public within days and it will have substantial impact."

Message from Iraq to its tyrannical enemies: Don't tread on me.

Two strikes against the enemies of humanity in Iraq. The first, what the military believes is a significant amputation of terrorist operation:

U.S. forces uncovered a facility where car and roadside bombs were made, and detained 51 people believed linked to an insurgent cell, U.S. military officials said Saturday. Soldiers from the 1st Battalion 8th Cavalry Regiment discovered four vehicles that were to be potentially used as car bombs and several assembled roadside bombs. ...The detainees are all suspected of being members of an insurgent cell responsible for placing roadside bombs that have killed two U.S. soldiers in the area.

That's a good find in a city with geography nearly as broad as New York City. And in a country the size of California:

Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin that Polish soldiers recovered last month in Iraq, the head of Poland's military intelligence said Friday.

Dukaczewski refused to give any further details about the terrorists or the sellers of the munitions, saying only that his troops thwarted terrorists by purchasing the 17 rockets for a Soviet-era launcher and two mortar rounds containing the nerve agent for an undisclosed sum June 23.

"Laboratory tests showed the presence in them of cyclosarin, a very toxic gas, five times stronger than sarin and five times more durable," Bieniek told Poland's TVN24 at the force's Camp Babylon headquarters.

...The munitions were found in a bunker in the Polish sector, but Polish officials refused to be more specific.

Section C, subsection 8a of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 of April 3, 1991 states that: "Iraq shall unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of all chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities." Contrary to the teachings of domestic politics, there is no leeway on what the meaning of "all" is. Saddam Hussein's regime was one for meticulous records, so the advocates of conventional wisdom must prove how and why an anomaly in Ba'athist control over every aspect of life and work in Iraq centered on its most powerful assets. As of 1998, the discrepancy between the number of chemical munitions Saddam's Iraq claimed to have destroyed unilaterally but remained unverified by the United Nations Special Commission numbered 31,000. Today's emerging picture is one where Saddam's word on his treatment of the Iraqi people was as worthless as his denial of weapons possession. It is believed that Saddam murdered into the millions; 350,000 bodies have been found in mass graves. The long list of Saddam's undestroyed arsenal from the UNSCOM days can be read by all; and now dozens of munitions have been discovered.

This is evidence that should poleaxe the past year's recriminations against President Bush, reckless sloganeering that, at worst, implies that Saddam Hussein was the man with truth on his side. One can only hope that the national debate has some flexibility left to it. The Polish commander was unambiguous on the devastation the cyclosarin could have caused, and one of the immediate justifications for deposing Saddam Hussein was to not leave the chance for one of those munitions' purchase by the wrong sorts of people to the oversight of a sworn enemy.

BURYING THE LEDE, EVIDENCE: The big reversal touted by the press now is that "none" of the munitions reported earlier by the Poles contains sarin gas. A qualifier is that two of the rockets were found to have "traces" of the chemical weapon. Since when does a man whose house contains "traces" of, say, a murder victim's blood not come under suspicion? Sarin gas is sarin gas, and it was found in undestroyed munitions. [Even if this correction were accurate], the point is as it's always been: Saddam could not be trusted once sanctions were lifted, his weapons divisions showed every indication of launching new programs under newfound cover and his history of working with terrorists raised the specter of cutouts armed with catastrophe. The left's revision of history and the political classes' savaging of the intelligence community is shameless.

THE POLES DON'T BUY IT: They're standing by their report. Words we need to hear:

"They were missiles that were made 15 years ago, which should have been destroyed and were not. They would certainly have very dangerous had they fallen into the hands of terrorists," said Deputy Defense Minister Janusz Zemke.

This counter needs press time. If need be, details of testing methods need to be compared.

Time and time again I have explained, like others, that a democratic Iraq is the best weapon the free world can wield against the Near East's authoritarian culture. Make no mistake: the governments of Iran and Syria have, respectively, supported the southern and central terrorist insurgencies because they're terrified of what a free society will do to theirs. Just fifteen months after the Ba'athists fell, we're beginning to see proof positive:

The rise of a secular, democratic Iraq could pose a threat to Iran's Shi'ite clerical establishment, which fears it would serve as a powerful model for moderate Iranians who seek change, clerics said. Many senior clerics are particularly concerned about any shift in the center of gravity within Shi'ite Islam away from Iran's holy city of Qom, from which clerics wield immense political authority, toward Najaf in neighboring Iraq.

The emergence of Najaf coincides with the rise to political prominence of Iraqi clerics, such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who question the legitimacy of absolute rule by the clergy. "Now Najaf, as a more moderate center, will regain the place it held for most of the past 1,500 years," said Hadi Qabel, a reformist midranking cleric from Qom. "It will rejuvenate the role of clerics throughout the Shi'ite world. ... Iraqi moderate clerics like Ayatollah Ali Sistani do not consider ruling the country as their legitimate right," he said.

It's no coincidence that Najaf served as headquarters for Iranian-backed thug Muqtada al-Sadr, sitting right at the heart of his now-dead insurrection. Iran and the rest of Iraq's despot neighbors fear the freed country's affect on their oppressed populations, a distant call to freedom and life as civilized men that will only grow louder.

Challenges, but progress: Jim Hake has another upbeat report from the Iraq-based, non-profit group Spirit of America. The Marines in al Anbar, using television equipment purchased through donations, cut a story on a women's sewing center that in turn received its equipment from SoA. If you have the time and inclination, read about the transformative power of America's private generosity — and donate to charity; smarter, quicker, more efficient and more effective than any public engagement.

Ali was on call when he heard that sovereignty had been transferred to Iraq, but that didn't stop him from putting together a celebration. (Another shot, and the story.)

Via IP, a Marine's take on just about the most slanted reporting from abroad since Pravda:

Iraq veterans often say they are confused by American news coverage, because their experience differs so greatly from what journalists report. Soldiers and Marines point to the slow, steady progress in almost all areas of Iraqi life and wonder why they don’t get much notice – or in many cases, any notice at all.

Part of the explanation is Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post. He spent most of his career on the metro and technology beats, and has only four years of foreign reporting, two of which are in Iraq. The 31-year-old now runs a news operation that can literally change the world, heading a bureau that is the source for much of the news out of Iraq.

...Chandrasekaran's crew generates a relentlessly negative stream of articles from Iraq – and if there are no events to report, they resort to man-on-the-street interviews and cobble together a story from that.

How do I know this? Because my fellow Marines and I witnessed it with our own eyes. ...Since I saw Rajiv Chandrasekaran's integrity up close, I haven't believed a word he writes, or any story coming out of the bureau he runs. You shouldn't, either.

The article is substantial, and tells quite a few stories. Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a name we've heard before, December of last year specifically, when the bureau chief put out a largely speculative, inaccurate (and ultimately incorrect) report on the Coalition Provisional Authority's plans. Which begs the question: how can Mr. Chandrasekaran provide an accurate portrayal of Iraq and Iraqis when he can't even get things right in the Green Zone?

Iraq's path to democratic autonomy truly begins today. Saddam Hussein may be alive, Iran and Syria and other despot nations scheming, thousands of terrorists across the region active and waiting; but their legacy is being unraveled, their days shortened. Iraqis now fight for freedom and justice. They will grow exponentially stronger in the next several years, their open and prosperous way of life becoming irresistable to the oppressed. This day marks the beginning of the end of tyranny in the Near East.

NEAR EAST OBSERVATORY: Our free men on the street are reporting in.

Smart choice:

The militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has declared a unilateral cease-fire with U.S. forces in the Baghdad district of Sadr City and has offered to help police ensure safety in the area, a statement said Friday.

...The declaration said the cease-fire was called to show al-Sadr's interest in preventing "terrorists and saboteurs" from "causing overwhelming chaos or security disorder." The militia offered "to actively contribute and positively cooperate with the honest parties in Iraqi police and the national forces" in order to secure the "safety of institutions, Iraqi state buildings and government buildings" as well as water, power, fuel and refineries.

There's no way to tell how sincere a murderous upstart like Muqtada al-Sadr could possibly be at this point, or how far his orders actually extend to the disorganized gangs that once made up his street muscle. But old Mookie sings sweetly today, motivation for the statement being two swollen black eyes, his political and paramilitary standing utterly smashed by Iraq's Shiite communities and Allied soldiers, respectively. With barely enough men now to put together a football club with special teams and a presidential attraction below the most hated man in Iraq, the defeated al-Sadr is talking cooperation. He does the right thing because he knows that if he doesn't, he eventually gets thumped.

The hard lesson here is the one the United States learned and — perhaps out of a forgivable, naïve gentleness — soon forgot after every victorious 20th-Century war: authoritarian cultures and those who excel in them are most open to change when they are left in ruin, when the lies of power through force are exposed, when democratic progress is the only hand up out of the pit. Know it as "creative destruction," the often heartbreaking but necessary actions democracies have been and will be taking for decades to secure the rapidly modernizing world from concentrated tyranny and evil. We see that the Fallujah experiment has only affected the hearts — and not the even actions — of the city people who never meant much harm to the Allies or a free Iraq in the first place, and that the old smuggler-city is the command center for bin Laden apprentice Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's last stand. The Iranian gambit via al-Sadr as it was first intended is finished, a failure. Fallujah's time has come. Though the risks of greater loss of life than seen in months haven't lessened, the final stronghold of authoritarian resistance in Iraq, a panoply of secular and fundamentalist representatives — each faction pretending to serve its own higher cause but really only servicing the imbecile's teaching of Cain — must be destroyed, its leaders killed and its lesser followers scattered and drawn into civil society. Iraq will ever be in jeopardy, stuck as only half-right, until this is done.

News that's fit to print:

Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq.

The new document, which appears to have circulated only since April, was provided to The New York Times several weeks ago, before the commission's report was released. Since obtaining the document, The Times has interviewed several military, intelligence and United States government officials in Washington and Baghdad to determine that the government considered it authentic.

...The document, which asserts that Mr. bin Laden "was approached by our side," states that Mr. bin Laden previously "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative," but was now willing to meet in Sudan, and that "presidential approval" was granted to the Iraqi security service to proceed.

Congratulations to the New York Times for reporting this, even though the newspaper's timing versus its politicking against the president leaves much to be desired. And there's a dig at Ahmed Chalabi that, if one parses semantics carefully, is tangential to questions of the documents' authenticity. Will John Kerry acknowledge this? Doing so would require a 180-degree turn from a statement he made just a week ago, when he declared "this administration took its eye off of al-Qaida, took its eye off of the real war on terror in Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan and transferred it for reasons of its own to Iraq." But flip-flops are a favorite for Kerry, the original Candidate Mxyzptlk. Besides, as well as Bill Kristol lambastes the Democratic presidential candidate, Kerry was careful to only imply an absence of Iraq-al Qaeda links, providing red meat for party faithful and an escape hatch to ditch the statement in events like — why, like the publication of investigative news stories such as this one.

If John Kerry were coming from the geostrategic perspective of Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, one where the threat of Saddam Hussein and his terrorist ties are immutable laws of our world, and the presidential campaign were truly about how to best fight terrorism and the nations and cultures that mass-produce it, the Massachusetts senator might have a message attractive to most Americans. As it stands, his foreign policy platform depends on blocking out or qualifying the kind of news the Times made today, denying the inextricable link between dictatorship and insecurity — in this case, terrorism. Trying to appease a core constituency agnostic to moral definitions of good and evil, democracy and despotism, all while seeking a complex matter to exploit as a campaign issue, Kerry is at perpetual war with facts; facts that may pile up considerably by November.