Wait a minute. This can't be correct:

Al Qaeda-connected terror chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists are apparently trying to recruit Iraqi weapons of mass destruction experts and resources for possible future attacks against the U.S.-led coalition, the head of the Iraq Survey Group told FOX News Thursday.

...“When we have investigated certain labs and contacted certain former experts in the WMD program, we have found that they are being recruited by anti-coalition groups,” Duelfer told FOX News. “They are being paid by anti-coalition groups. We’re seeing interest in developing chemical munitions.”

He also told Fox News that about 10 or 12 sarin and mustard gas shells have been found in various locations in Iraq.

But that can't be! The WMD case was "cooked up in Texas," right? Right? Terrorists would never work with Pan-Arabist dogs, right? If any of this comes as to a surprise to you, you've been misled — but not by Bush.

TO THE ARCHIVES: Worth recalling:

David Kay, who recently resigned as the chief US weapons inspector in Iraq, said Tuesday it was "absolutely prudent"” for the US to go to war there.

"In fact," he told NBC television, "I think at the end of the inspection process, we'll paint a picture of Iraq that was far more dangerous than even we thought it was before the war. It was of a system collapsing. It was a country that had the capability in weapons of mass destruction areas, and terrorists, like ants to honey, were going after it."

It can't be made clearer than that. As I said yesterday, historians will examine why it took the West as long as it did to shake itself out its doubt-induced trance.

Following Glenn Reynolds' link, I was first a little sad to read how much news is shut out of nearly every radio, television and print report on Iraq — most stories little more than body counts. But then I realized that despite the challenges of the "second campaign," Iraq is ascending: and if enough Americans believe in the president and refuse to elect the Massachusetts senator whose adherance to universal democracy is unconvincing, Iraq will only get better.

AND: Omar has some more good news you might not otherwise hear about.

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.

I finally began reading Zeyad's essays on Iraq's tribal culture. Near the end of his first (of four, the latest right here), I was struck by Zeyad's mention of Arab bargaining, a Near Eastern custom most of us would recognize, set in today's new context:

Some of these values may seem contradictory to outsiders at first glance, for example a Sheikh may wholeheartedly offer a whole lamb to a guest for dinner, but at the same time he may argue ridiculously with a grocer over a few Dinars. To understand that you should know that it is not the money that the Sheikh is upset about, he argues because he feels he is being cheated and that is humiliating to him, he wants to be the cheater not the cheated, if the grocer later asks the Sheikh for an incredible sum of money the Sheikh would without any hesitation give it to him out of generosity because it would bring pride and a sense of dominance to him.

You can also attribute that to the sense of superiority, the Sheikh wants to be dominant, he enjoys being asked for anything, yet he hates with all his heart to ask anyone for anything even for directions, as that would be a sign of weakness. That also explains the tendency of most Arabs to bargain over almost everything.

Pride in generosity, good business and personal importance? The Iraqis (and other freed Arabs), given the requisite time and industrial tools, will make model capitalists. Goodness, in forty years, Iraq could even eclipse the postwar rise of the Japanese.

Mercy has kept the recent Coalition Provisional Authority poll in its place: a snapshot of opinions taken from a fraction of a country's population that may or may not serve as a key to understanding the entire country, only when considered alongside other surveys. It is at least the fourth major poll to be taken of and, in part, by Iraqis. This time the results are being reported as "grim," a remark borrowed from a diplomat, though it's unclear how some of the more murky opinions of the Average Iraqi Joe differ from previous polls — or are at all inconsistent with a people having lived without Saddam reading over their shoulders for barely a year, and having lived not a day without authoritarian interests from all around doing their worst with drive-bys and car bombs.

In [August] of last year, Karl Zinmeister and the American Enterprise Institute worked with Zogby International to poll Iraqis. What did they find in Iraqis? Optimism — for years ahead. Confusion about democracy, notwithstanding an intense curiosity. Iraqis disliked Islamism, al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. They didn't care for occupation but were no fools about what separated them from murderous hoodlums with eyes peering out from behind pillowcases and scarves.

In [February], after the capture of Saddam Hussein and a steady decline in terrorist violence, Oxford International set about polling and discovered essentially the same opinions. Special to this survey was a separation of opinions into demographics: Iraqi Kurds having spent ten, not just one, years under American protection were overwhelmingly supportive and deferential amid postwar difficulties. Sunnis and Shiites were once again torn between "humiliation" and "liberation," between the Arabist nonsense they'd been fed for decades and the strange thing called "freedom" people were ending up dead over. What is this freedom, many must have wondered. That three-quarters of the 2,000 polled Iraqis saw joining a political party or peacefully demonstrating just as likely a proposition as using violence tells us two things: First, one year of gradual improvement laced with wraiths from the past does nothing to wash away years of totalitarian culture, and it's absurd to think otherwise. Second, if demonstrations are not yet within the courage of most Iraqis, who are those men whipping themselves with chains, portraits of al-Sadr held high? Surely not a representative group.

Confidence in foreign forces was low: 39%, 28% and 25% for the now-defunct Governing Council, the CPA and Anglo-American forces, respectively. But 77% said they'd never actually interacted with soldiers, and Iraqis still weren't ready to see foreigners go. And most striking was the grudging happiness: nearly three-quarters of Iraqis were pleased with their lives, difficulties notwithstanding, and just as many looked to better — not similar or worse — times in the future.

One month later, Gallup released a large-sample survey that underscored and extended Oxford's conclusions. No Kurd in his right mind wanted to return to the Saddamite nightmare; Sunnis and Shiites weren't happy with the occupation, but they weren't crazy, either. As in March, Kurdish autonomy better equipped them for early-democratization hardships. Arabs were sternly critical of the CPA but had nothing to complain about in terms of an improved quality of life. Near East pride reared its head as most Arabs felt occupied while Kurds felt liberated. But virtually no one believed that they would be candidly expressing opinions to Gallup for a global audience had the Allies not deposed Saddam Hussein. And once again, about one out of twenty Arabs had ever met the soldiers their majority condemned.

The latest poll, taken towards the end of the Khomeinist-Ba'athist offensive, picks up where the three before it left off. Iraqis' faith in the Coalition Provisional Authority is still scant (which could be, in a light-hearted way, a good portent for the future of Iraqi libertarians). Respondents call their circumstance occupation.

Two results seem to be misunderstood by the Washington Times report I quote. An increase in positive opinion for Muqtada al-Sadr is billed as troubling, as is the conviction that his disastrous insurrection helped to unify the country. Is this so bad? There's another response the report offered, billing al-Sadr as less popular for executive power than Saddam Hussein himself. Can't we put this together? Muqtada al-Sadr, from the Iraqi perspective, has at least temporarily laid down his arms and sent his merry band of street vermin home. While his gangs were wiped out by Allied forces, his political defeat has come largely from Shiite religious and secular forces joining against him — "join" a synonym of "unify." A shared threat to Iraq's toddler-wobbly common good brought people together for purposeful action. One could similarly say actions of Osama bin Laden helped to unify America, and then misinterpret negatively.

Is there anything wrong with Iraqis? Or the occupation? No — democratization, we've learned, is a wonderful but bittersweet thing, Iraq's made no easier by its terror-culture neighbors. In Tokyo, Douglas MacArthur could always rely on the Japanese public to support his most sweeping reforms when conservatives in the Diet refused to budge. But the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers was running an occupation, after all, and it was not easy or quick or especially appreciated by the Japanese people, despite their fascination with all things Western. Extremism abounded in those first years as much of the population lived in a want and insecurity like that of Iraq. The last effective day of occupation, April 28, 1952, was ordinary and unspecial; simply the formal end to a state out of which the country had finally grown.

One year ago I wrote about parallels between the two American occupations, and where the limits of our influence cross with a real responsibility for Iraqis to use pride, humility, trust and autonomy, each at the right moments. It's no small task, and as Wretchard warned yesterday there will be no CPA to blame. Here is part of what I wrote:

[T]he troubles of post-war Japan must not be taken lightly: suffering and confusion of the Iraq people will be at once unique in its aesthetics (the evil of regionally cultural anarchists and terrorists) and universal in its effect (potential [paralysis]). The country will most likely remain dangerously uncertain of its course and worth for some time. But, second, and more encouraging, is the record of Japan's transcendence. While all nations walk in their own Valley of the Shadow of Death, every one is capable of defeating their worst imperfections.

The Allies will be a source of endless logistics and guidance, if only those resources can be utilized by Iraqis. To this, all that is needed is patience and perseverance and faith.

President Bush has said many times that Iraqis have "a friend in America." Unless domestic politics shift to the party and classes of representation that feel no great urge to fight terror and dictatorship, to talk about freedom but whine when it doesn't come gift-wrapped, that friendship will remain strong; the "logistics and guidance" will continue no matter how poorly we are initially or ultimately received, or if our intentions are misunderstood. Friendship stands even when buffeted, lousy poll or not. There is more to all of this than brownouts and lurking terror. The Kurds can and should encourage their reluctant Arab countrymen of that.

Did I have a hand in this? A couple of months ago I sent an e-mail to Iraqi blogger Zeyad, asking him about the place of tribalism in modern Iraq; I had happened upon a World Book Encyclopedia from the mid-1960s and read that even then, tribal society was generally sequestered from the growing urban areas. For whatever reason — perhaps others inquired alongside me — Zeyad now has three concentrated essays on Iraq's tribal and familial politics. I haven't had the time to read them yet but if you've got a spare forty-five minutes, they're here, here and here.

Interesting stuff, indeed. I believe that a nation's culture can't be judged or accepted definitively if it has existed only under a rule of the strong and modern authoritarianism — every institution in society would be drawn from a coarse lifestyle based on power and violence instead of democracy's valuations of popularity and civil discourse — and that the true character of a people will only mature when living freely. Germany, Eastern Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other countries exemplify this. But Iraq's present condition is the one with which Allied troops and Iraqi democrats must begin. We're best off understanding it.

On the heels of a news report from several weeks ago few read or heard , another breakthrough on discovering the nature of Saddam Hussein's thirst for the most powerful weapons:

On June 9, [Acting Executive Chairman of United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission] Demetrius Perricos announced that before, during and after the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction and medium-range ballistic missiles to countries in Europe and the Middle East. Entire factories were dismantled and shipped as scrap metal to Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey, among others, at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month. As an example of speed by which these facilities were dismantled, Perricos displayed two photographs of a ballistic missile site near Baghdad, one taken in May 2003 with an active facility, the other in February 2004 that showed it had simply disappeared.

What passed for scrap metal and has since been discovered as otherwise is amazing. Inspectors have found Iraqi SA-2 surface-to-air missiles in Rotterdam — complete with U.N. inspection tags — and 20 SA-2 engines in Jordan, along with components for solid-fuel for missiles. Short-range Al Samoud surface-to-surface missiles were shipped abroad by agents of the regime. That missing ballistic missile site contained missile components, a reactor vessel and fermenters — the latter used for the production of chemical and biological warheads.

"The problem for us is that we don't know what may have passed through these yards and other yards elsewhere," Ewen Buchanan, Perricos's spokesman, said. "We can't really assess the significance and don't know the full extent of activity that could be going on there or with others of Iraq's neighbors."

...The implications of the United Nations' discovery of how Hussein's regime got rid of many of its banned weapons programs is staggering, especially considering that it happened partly under the watch of U.N. weapons inspectors. And yet many in the media are either unwilling or unable to break out of their cycle of waiting to report the next terrorist attack. The truth about the justification for the war and Saddam Hussein's Iraq is gradually being revealed to the world, but it seems our journalists don't want to tell the story.

There's more to the article, all of it worth your time. At first glance, it seems bizarre that Saddam would surreptitiously dismantle weapons and manufacturing sites, rather than proudly and openly to draw attention to feigned cooperation. As I surmised shortly after his capture, however, Saddam is a survivor. It can't be underestimated how confident the brutal old man would be in his ability to strip out as much incriminating material as possible, patiently gain political support for his release from international attention and then quietly rebuild his arsenal.

A skeptic could argue that, indeed, these aren't stockpiles that have become the chattering classes' white elephant to wave in front of the Bush administration. But then, the WMD case was one of several reasons to depose Saddam Hussein, and the weapons threat extended far beyond existing stockpiles — in fact, Saddam's capability and intent to produce anew were major Clinton and Bush White House arguments, corroborated by Iraqi Survey Group leader David Kay's final report. Nor has Iraq been fully canvassed, or the Syrian connection explored to any degree. And a skeptic is likely to be a bureau-internationalist, a strong supporter of UN-mandated international law; so what of the fact that every one of these discoveries, including those from Kay's report, exposes Saddam's flagrant violation of Resolution 1441 and every resolution that came before it? An agreement is an agreement, and laws matter, especially with the United Nations, right? Right?

The article ends with a critical turn on the press. That's fair and accurate — a heartbreaking reality at this point in Iraq's reconstruction is the transformation of leftist rhetoric, purposely or carelessly, into urban myth. But more importantly, as I heard mentioned earlier today: when will we hear from the president on this? Lies, like the one trying to bury years of irrefutable evidence against Saddam, don't fall down their own.

Dallas-based Iraqi blogger Fayrouz found a story about Iraqi women learning the art of defining trajectories for high-velocity plumbum:

The first time the women at the paramilitary training camp here went for shooting practice most were nervous, some started crying and others did not want to pick up the guns. Nearly four weeks later, Shemaa Jasem, 22, held up her paper target showing three small holes near the bull's-eye, and was disgusted. "Bad shooting today," she said. ...Where the mood was once anxious, it has become jovial. Two of the women were shooting Saturday while the others sat on the ground chatting cheerfully.

Mrs. Jasem, a former factory worker from Baghdad whose sister Sondas, 33, also was going through training, said she was proud of what she was doing. Most of the women refused to give their full names for security reasons.

"This is a good thing for my country, going against the terrorists and the bad guys," she said. "My mother and father are very happy. I want to join the American Army one day. "Wherever I go, I tell people that I work for the ICDC and the coalition forces."

Not only are Iraqis learning the vital role of civilians responsibly carrying arms to defend family, property and country but women are invited to participate as equals. It's as if people in a foreign culture had inspected, experienced and finally adopted a democratic concept once alien to them! Someone tell Jacques Chirac.

One month ago, in praising Allied accomplishments in Iraq, I noted the unresolved nature of Fallujah:

As the Marine Corps made clear in Fallujah, insurgents were utterly outmatched and their position in the Golan neighborhood stood at the mercy of an American initiative. Whatever reprieve the Ba'athists gained after days of heavy losses began — and thus can end — at our forces' choosing.

The Marines are to be congratulated, having averted what from all accounts was an inevitable high-casualty showdown in that northwest Golan neighborhood. Since then they have been making generous overtures to the people and moderate political leadership inside the city, recognizing the indefinition between heartfelt support for Saddam Hussein and Arabist rule-of-the-strong and forced exclamations of allegience by a terrified populace in a long-troubled city.

The military's previously light-handed treatment of Fallujah worked to deny them initiative and political encouragement they enjoyed from an overwhelming majority of Iraqis for the demolition of southern Khomeinist insurgent Muqtada al-Sadr. For a month, the American-led occupation publicly provided the violent men of Fallujah an opportunity for relative clemency and an invitation to join the new Iraq. The outstretched hand has been knocked away:

Reports say that insurgents today launched mortar attacks against Iraqi security forces in the town of Al-Fallujah, reportedly causing casualties. Details are still sketchy. Earlier reports said that U.S. tanks were gathering outside the town.

If true, a military buildup and eventual killing blow — the one intended for weeks ago — is altogether appropriate and necessary. For over thirty days, for the whole of Iraq and the world to see, the Ba'athist-Syrian-terrorist combine was given a chance. Could we have expected hardened criminals and murderous fanatics, "souped up on jihad," to act like civilized men? Hardly. The Marines knew who would join and who would humor. But the case for a warrant has been built, if not to convince the skeptics and terror sympathists, than to discredit them; and to reassure that Iraqi people that their past — and premonition of failure — lies in the black hearts of Fallujah. As with al-Sadr, the Allies have their answer, and must choose to end the reprieve here and now.

Another sign of Iraqi-American partnership: Omar's weblog operation received nearly a thousand dollars in donated funds from the states. With his profile high enough to have attracted the likes of National Review at least twice already, this money is well-spent.