Here's one for the leftist-Islamist protest coalition to cry foul over:

At a reception sponsored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies late last week, the 20-member Iraqi Women's Delegation met 20 American women who were described as Washington's female "movers and shakers."...One of the delegates, Lina Abood, who was a candidate for Iraq's Governing Council, described her fellow delegates as "strong women."

...The women expressed appreciation over and over again and talked with deep sorrow about the Iraqis who were executed, gassed, or mass murdered. They don't even want to think about the torture chambers and the unmarked mass graves documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Pentagon files — 18 tons of documents consisting of five million pages of atrocities. For the women in the delegation, the stories of Saddam's brutality are all too true, as is the fact that women, especially, were targeted by the regime.

For them, talk of peaceful solutions is unrealistic; their personal experience belies any attempt at "containment" or "compromise." Several of them were born during the terrorist regime and have never known peace in their homeland; all of them were affected personally by Saddam's horror. They know that they cannot stop the Baathists without the United States' military force. They know that they cannot institute democracy alone; they need assistance from U.S. peace forces.

America: a nation that forcibly removes genocidal dictators to institute self-government, free markets, religious freedom and equality under the law. Such imperialists we are!

Speaking of protests, they were a bust yesterday. Istanbul attacks notwithstanding, the media hasn't said much about protests today - and the afternoon has already begun to wane in London. Shilling for dictators just isn't what it used to be.

If it's on IP, then it's everywhere. Nevertheless, Zeyad's account of Iraqis' response to terrorism is just another reason why we only need give them time and tools:

Huge anti-terrorism demonstrations were held in Nassiriyah yesterday by students association condemning the attacks on the Italian force carrying signs such as 'No to terrorism. Yes to freedom and peace', and 'This cowardly act will unify us'. I have to add that there were similar demonstrations in Baghdad more than a week ago also by students against the bombings of police stations early this Ramadan. I hope the demonstrations advocates that bugged me are satisfied now. There are also preparations for anti-terror demonstrations before Id (end of Ramadan holidays).

Terrorists, like any agents of pure destruction, are practically their own worst enemies. Practically. They'll still need some help from the free world to be sent along to hell.

IRAQIS ARE SHAPING UP TO BE THE BEST ALLIES WE COULD HOPE FOR: Sergeant Stryker has a video capture of that rally in Nasiriyah. You know who terrorism's most dedicated foes in Iraq will be? Children who are young enough to not have been permanently scarred by Saddam's cruelty yet old enough to understand how equally evil and horrifying terrorists are. Children like that kid with the set jaw, hands on hips. As one fellow said, bless them.

AND THEY KNOW WHAT KIND OF 'PEACE' THEY WANT: Read "You Owe Us an Apology." I read it yesterday via Zeyad's weblog; Andrew Sullivan has it posted today. This, if anything, can chisel away at the thick skulls of self-appointed princes of peace, who thought even in the end that averting war - and leaving Saddam Hussein in power to continue his massacre - was for the best hope for mankind. It makes you wonder what kind of imaginary "mankind" they're thinking of. Certainly not one including this man.

President Bush has consistently maintained that the United States and allies will "stay the course in Iraq." That course has now been given a finish line:

American administrators will hand over sovereignty to a new transitional government by June, the Iraqi Governing Council said Saturday, announcing an accelerated U.S. plan for ending the occupation of Iraq. The plan would mean the end of the U.S.-led coalition administration in Iraq, but not the end of the American troop presence. The new Iraqi government would negotiate an accord on the status of U.S. forces in the country.

I'm a bit surprised by the brevity that will now be applied to the struggling country's reconstruction. Internal security - particularly against organized paramilitary elements - must be achieved. If I disagree over anything with Secretary Rumsfeld, it's his intimations that disrupting free movement of Ba'athists and terrorists is a task for Iraqis themselves. The compromising of borders and law enforcement (despotic or not) has always been, unfortunately, an unavoidable consequence of dislodging a totalitarian regime. And it is our responsibility to restore order.

Given that popular opinion is strongly in favor of liberal civil rights and the Iraqi government has already declared economic policies almost more laissez-faire than our own, we don't need to worry much about law-abiding Iraqi people following the correct course towards free-market democracy.

History can lend some insight, too. First of all, the Japanese held elections throughout their occupation; even though the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers held great powers of oversight, the people could send chosen representatives to parliament. Second, according to most accounts, the majority of reforms mandated within General Douglas MacArthur's "Basic Directive" were accomplished by 1947. Not long after, the occupation underwent a policy shift known as the "Reverse Course," one more strongly dictated by the State Department in the interests of Cold War strategy. Moreover, Gary D. Allinson's Japan's Postwar History maintains an evaluation of "reform early, reform often":

Timing was a major consideration. Simply put, reforms advanced earliest had the greatest likelihood of easy acceptance.

If the job of creating a peaceful, free Iraq couldn't be accomplished on this schedule, I doubt the Bush administration would have chosen it. Domestic pressure has been more intense than before, during and immediately after military action, but it hasn't been particularly focused (or based on much more than ahistorical critiques and political opportunism). And another consideration is to reserve forces for additional military actions against terrorist states as needed. I'm very curious to hear reactions from others - I'll post them here as they come in.

OTHER THOUGHTS: Major Sean Bannion, apparently posting on Sasha Castel from Baghdad, has a mixed reaction. Obviously, this is a compromise; they're never pretty. Personally, I'd disregard sectarian favoritism and some police corruption in the first year of free living after twenty years of Saddam and twenty more of assorted dictators. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Think about one democracy's near-entire southern population living among sectarian favoritism and endemic police corruption nearly two hundred years after the country's inception. Hint: Selma. But Bannion's in the middle of it - that speaks for quite a bit.

Andrew Olmsted is a little bit less optimistic - and rightly demands some evidence from the adminstration that it hasn't gone soft on nation-building. My qualifiers above will only go so far. The next few days will be crucial for the White House to communicate with those who have invested faith in the president's ability to fight terrorism by fighting its nursery, dictatorship. But is it a cave? I doubt the White House to be so naive as to think that any problems in Iraq after the projected transition of power would not be considered its responsibility; that's the sort of duck-and-run we saw from Clinton and H.W. Bush (and Reagan in Lebanon), which only encouraged September 11th. And why would Bush paint himself into a corner by torpedoing his own foreign policy? Even though domestic pressure has certainly factored into this decision - and the left is already spinning it as abandonment - the last motive I'd suggest would be disavowal.

GIVE A LIBBY A GUN, AND: Armed Liberal did what I made sure not to do - write a blog entry before giving the announcement some analysis. Trust me, I spent a very unhinged two-and-one-third seconds while I stared, slack-jawed, at the television. Then I collected myself and started reading. Then I posted! As usual, the Winds of Change comment thread is worth just as much as the writing of A.L. and the rest. I added a comment of my own. Two remarks that stand out are Chuck with "Hasn't [Bush] earned some trust by now?" and Peter Stanley who echoes my strategic consideration:

Most of the US forces in Iraq will have to be elsewhere by 2005. 2005 is the first year that oil production from Iraq and Russia will be able to really squeeze or replace the Saudis.

There's Syria, Iran, Libya, Venezuela to be worried about and that's for starters.

Very, very interesting. Monday's going to hit Washington D.C. like water from a bursting dam.

THE TEXT: After a quick scan, it looks to be on the right track. And not one mention of a doggoned "Islamic Republic."

Via Stephen Green, numbers published in the New York Times that we should keep in mind in the face of this difficult Ramadan:

[V]iolence against coalition troops has increased as the occupation has lengthened and, in regard to the all-important objective of winning Iraqi hearts and minds, unemployment rates are still too high. However, most other trends are encouraging — declining crime rates in Baghdad, increasing numbers of Iraqi police officers being trained, and telephone and water services at about 80 percent of pre-war levels. Once one accepts the premise that the United States and its partners are still at war in Iraq, and that the mission there is clearly the most challenging American military operation since the Vietnam War, the most accurate long-term outlook is one of guarded optimism.

As I've been saying for months - ditto.

Via IP, the latest Iraqi to take advantage of his newfound freedom is doing so with a weblog. He'll be talking sports - and you know what? He sounds like quite a lot of us when we were sixteen (minus wrestling for me, it never connected). Anecdote or not, single citizen or not; halfway across the world, and they want to enjoy life as we do. Is there any doubt of Iraq's potential, given the world's proper care and protection during the early years?

It's moving to a power beyond description. Too much? I suppose the piquant, 21st-Century response to all this would be along the lines of "freaking wonderful." Yes. Imagine Charleton Heston's Moses offering that one up to God on Mount Sinai, majestic and deliberate, cutting through a full-throttled orchestral score. "Freaking wonderful, my Lord."

Wonderful. I see a list of inspiring Iraqi weblogs appearing on my right-hand column soon.

As far back as February, even the New York Times was reporting the White House's, ahem, nuanced justifications for taking military action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. One of those justifications was using freedom to innoculate societies from authoritarianism. Andrew Sullivan's got the dragnet.

David Frum is worried about the impending anti-American, pro-dictatorship rallies awaiting Bush in London, but he offers greater insight as to why evaluating the CIA report I noted yesterday should be done understanding the agency's hostility to the White House:

Thus far, the CIA/State mutiny has failed to have the desired impact on the president. Bush’s important speech at the National Endowment for Democracy last week emphatically recommitted the administration to a large policy against terror and for liberty in the region. The administration's stand-patters and accommodationists cannot have enjoyed hearing Bush rededicate himself to the ambitious principles that led the United States into Iraq - and that logically lead the United States against Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

So ask yourself this. Suppose you were a senior State Department or CIA official interested in jolting the president away from the “destabilizing” policies you oppose? You might try to stir up public and congressional against him by carefully placed and timed press leaks. But if those subtle did not succeed, you might be tempted to squeeze harder. And what could hurt an American president worse than plunging him into three consecutive days worth of Chicago 1968 style mass protests? Then, on the planeride home, perhaps somebody might soothingly insinuate that his terrible reception really ought to be blamed on those hawkish advisers of his ....

There's more empirical refutation of the CIA's assumption that Iraqis (or Arabs, or any non-Western culture) will bet on the strongest horse regardless of what it stands for. With such a great record of debunking inaccurate reports on the strength of lesser-known news, Brit Hume and his staff ought to run a weblog:

The Army general responsible for keeping the streets of Baghdad secure says Iraqi insurgency there is on the decline despite recent major attacks in Baghdad.

General Mark Hertling of the Army's First Armored Division, quoted by the Stars and Stripes newspaper, says "the [insurgents] who continue to fight are losing their support. ... The Iraqi Baghdad population is tired of others disrupting their peace." He notes that after last month's deadly blast at a Red Cross office in Baghdad, the military was swamped with tips from Iraqis, and he estimates 90 percent of such intelligence pays off.

Sounds to me as if the Iraqis view assaults on the people and governments trying to build a peaceful, self-governing society as a threat to Iraq itself - not the sign of a stronger competitor. The question is, does the CIA care?

The continuing attacks by secular and fundamentalist terrorists are frustrating, destructive and disheartening, but the recent CIA report that's sure to be waved in the president's face for days to come is drenched in the same systemic bigotry that our intelligence agency has always harbored. To wit: Third World peoples will take violence, poverty and tyranny over a good job in a nice neighborhood any day of the week. Unquestionably, the problem of terrorists themselves gaining confidence from insufficient Allied pressure is obvious even to a layman like myself, and being corrected. But what to make of conclusions like this:

One senior administration official said the report warned that the coalition's inability to crush the insurgents is convincing growing numbers of Iraqis that the occupation can be defeated, bolstering support for the insurgents.

The CIA report raised the concern that majority Shiite Muslims could begin joining minority Sunnis in turning against the occupation.

The CIA believes Iraqis would rather step back into a police state where they can live in fear and silence for the rest of their days, with the added possibility of a foreign theocracy opening shop in Baghdad? The latest Gallup poll of Iraqis shows an understandable skepticism of Western intentions at such a trying time of early reconstruction and threat from the lawless. It has been tortured by Walter Pincus - whose frequent misrepresentation of news deserves as close a watch as Howell Raines - but in keeping with previous polls taken by Iraqis, the desire for freedom is overwhelmingly obvious:

A new poll of Iraqis in Baghdad shows a majority of them oppose the separation of religion and state in a new Iraqi constitution. Forty percent support it.

The Gallup Poll also shows that 86 percent of Iraqis in Baghdad believe a new constitution should guarantee freedom of religion.

And while 98 percent say a new constitution should guarantee freedom of speech, only 68 percent say a new constitution should guarantee freedom of assembly.

Those numbers do not describe the latter-day Viet Cong - complete with a "turning point" meme - that the leftist press appears to be hinting at. Neither Japan nor Germany were plagued, postwar, by an organized force dedicated to malice (consider that, the disgusting Nazis and militarists with more honor than terrorists). After seven months, however, each beaten country was experiencing its own destitution. Japan was midway through a terrible famine. So even without insurgents, progress cannot be expected to move faster than an eager crawl with political obstacles and setbacks every step of the way.

The insurgents are there, and show only occasional signs of decline while their attacks have jumped tremendously in profile and audacity. Has the West as a whole sorely underestimated the resolve of authoritarians in the Near East to fight dearly for their lust of domination? Yes, and the betrayal of free Iraqis to the awful fate that awaits in a country reclaimed by evil is what the Allies risk if necessary measures are not taken soon. But to consider the good people of Iraq so mercenary as to sell their souls back to slavery is more indicative of the CIA's hopeless worldview than anything else.

I MIGHT HAVE SPOKEN TOO SOON: But only to claim that Germany wasn't plagued by organized groups of murderers and thieves to the point where they were nicknamed - "Werewolves." I would still caution that the forces trying to destabilize Iraq seem to have far more tactical effectiveness and regional, cultural support than anything in Germany and Japan. Today's explosive, ballistic and telecommunicative technology only aids the insurgents in Iraq. Nevertheless, democratization has always been plagued early on by frightening, discouraging challenges. Glenn Reynolds links to postwar violence and social disruption in Germany reported by Justin Katz and the CounterRevolutionary. And I've excerpted accounts from historians about Occupied Japan more than once.

Justin's right: most commentators haven't a clue about American occupations. Why do I say that? Because I've barely scratched the surface of Japan's and many problems that have arisen in Iraq can be accounted for - or at the very least, put into some context other than mindless panic. Remember: just as we should be honest about the reconstruction, we shouldn't fruitlessly doubt.

ANOTHER ONE FROM THE CIA: In the New York Times, no less (requires simple registration):

The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that prewar American intelligence about Iraq had been hampered by significant shortcomings, including what he called the C.I.A.'s unsatisfactory response to Congressional directives to improve its foreign language capacity.

...[A] senior Republican Congressional official said a significant amount of money allocated by Congress for the foreign language training of C.I.A. officers, particularly in Arabic, Persian and Pashto, had been redirected by the agency for other purposes during the last fiscal year.

An agency official who spoke on condition of anonymity said he understood that some of the money had been spent on computer-driven document translation rather than on training for individual officers.

That's what you call "hands-off."

If I had one criticism of the Bush administration's occupation of Iraq, it would be that the Sunni Triangle needed sterner handling - now, more than ever. Deference and delicacy have encouraged insurgents. They should be hit hard and hit often, until they're destroyed. Whatever difficult days these actions bring over weeks will be far worth the years of peace they'll help establish.

A distant acquaintance of mine who frequently and angrily denounces President Bush and the war effort recently posted an excerpt, as if to exalt it, from a book by Bush's father and his National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft. If you read Scowcroft's commentary against war in the Wall Street Journal some months ago, the thrust is similar. Both men try their best to defend the 1991 decision in which H.W. Bush deferred American prerogative to Paris and Riyadh, leaving Saddam in power to slaughter Shiite freedom fighters and continue clandestine weapons research. True enough, crossover opinions - Democrats supporting rightist causes and Republicans supporting leftist ones - are popular, anecdotal qualifiers for an argument under debate. Paragraphs such as the one by Bush Sr., extolling the virtues of stability over moral completion, will be raised more than once in a heated discussion on television or across newspapers and weblogs.

Christopher Hitchens gives this idea of leaving despots to time a good drubbing. For him, the matter has always been about humanity, stretching beyond the narrow purview of the United Nations:

The counsel of prudence offered above by Bush and Scowcroft was all very well as far as it went. But it did leave Saddam Hussein in power, and it did (as its authors elsewhere concede) involve the United States in watching from the sidelines as Iraqis were massacred for rebelling on its side and in its name. It left the Baathist regime free to continue work on weapons of mass destruction, which we know for certain it was doing on a grand scale until at the very least 1995. And it left Saddam free to continue to threaten his neighbors and to give support and encouragement to jihad forces around the world.

...Any failures of prediction on this point can thus be shared equally, but there is no moral equivalence between them. Thanks to the intervention, Saddam Hussein has been verifiably disarmed, and a full accounting of his concealment and acquisition programs is being conducted. Where is the objection to that? Why so much surliness and resentment?

...Arguments about democracy and reform cannot be phrased in terms of U.N. resolutions—especially when two of the relevant regime's clients are among the permanent membership of the Security Council—but there is every reason to believe that the United States has chosen the right side in the region, in principle as well as in practice. To take the salient case of Iran, does anybody believe that the mullahs' regime would have agreed to searches and inspections, or that Messrs Straw, de Villepin, and Fischer would have been able to seize the initiative on behalf of the European Union, except in the case that a) the main rival of Iran had been itself disarmed and b) a certain pedagogic lesson had been instilled? And that is to leave to one side the coming "people power" revolution in Iran itself, which seems to have been substantially encouraged by the "regime change" policy next door.

When a military action succeeds in driving out a brutal dictator, liberating those he oppressed and disarming him in four weeks after diplomats failed for 12 years - while further securing the world by injecting a regional sense of hope and alternative to doctrines of hate and violence - what can its opponents stand for except a retreat from reality or, worse, an indifference to their fellow man? The further nihilists and isolationists push against evidence contrary to their beliefs, the uglier the answer to this question will be.