Glenn Reynolds provides an excellent roundup of news that best describes the reconstruction of Iraq: unfinished (in fact, still in its first stages), a bit uncertain, but progressing and only adding to the population's strengthening optimism - optimism that began in mid-April when their oppressor's disgusting statues and effigies were torn to pieces.

The best part? Much of the coverage is also self-critical - yes, journalists are a little unhappy journalism lately. As the Instapundit puts it, "Big Media is catching on."

Via Andrew Sullivan, a fine example of American generosity and know-how:

Kirkuk, a multiethnic city of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Assyrians that is 150 miles north of the capital, may be the U.S. military's greatest Iraq success story. Attacks on soldiers are unusual, violent crime is low, and Iraqis have worked with Americans to restore basic services to prewar levels.

The paratroopers in Kirkuk, like those in Mosul, the other major northern city, have thrown themselves into nation-building, and they have outpaced the rest of Iraq in turning over local government, security and reconstruction tasks to Iraqis.

That effort is aided by the peaceful environment, partly a result of the city's geography and ethnic balance, and the 173d Airborne's quick moves to establish control after the war. Another big factor is that there is less coalition bureaucracy; soldiers can act on the spot to solve problems.

The article offers many other instances of successful communication with locals and solid progress towards normalcy - democratic normalcy - while hinting that the secret to the 173rd's success is a lack of bureaucratic interference. That's something for timid politicians in Washington to consider as they seek a U.N.-mandated or loan-stuffed back door as if it were the best option, rather than the easiest one. Is this story an isolated case? Not at all, with nine-tenths of the country peaceful; what's more, paratrooper units have generally been leading the way in infrastructure restoration and Iraqi fellowship. Consider Kirkuk and Mosul models of civilized order that, once appreciably restored to allow for resources to shift elsewhere, can eventually be duplicated across the country. Our boys and the Iraqis will win this, yet.

David Kay came to Washington. While many on the left cackled about the lack of clearly marked stockpiles of ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and continued to insinuate that Bush viewed the threat as specifically "imminent" - he did not, quite clearly rebuking the idea with "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent" - David Kay delivered a very encouraging public report. Where some see a vindication of Saddam Hussein, Andrew Sullivan has been blogging overtime to lay out the big picture. His strongest point quotes Kay directly:

If you don't have time, here are my highlights. First off:

We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.

Translation: Saddam was lying to the U.N. as late as 2002. He was required by the U.N. to fully cooperate. He didn't. The war was justified on those grounds alone. Case closed. Some of the physical evidence still remains, despite what was clearly a deliberate, coordinated and thorough attempt to destroy evidence before[,] during and after the war.

And as we all know, "international law" for some is less a standard among nations to be enforced than an obstacle for the United States. Hold brutal dictators accountable for violated resolutions - and violated resolutions on the violation of previous resolutions? For shame!

Sullivan goes on to highlight more evidence of Saddam's discrete weapons programs. Don't forget this, either. Bottom line? Senator Jay Rockefeller was smugly chatting with the press yesterday about "no surprises," though what actually came to no surprise was Saddam's relentless drive towards [and illegal possession of!] catastrophic weapons.

AND ANOTHER THING: Here's a lesson in deductive reasoning. The remnants of dictatorships don't ferret out and assassinate scientists if no programs or stockpiles exist to which the scientists can lead Allied troops.

GO AHEAD, SURPRISE ME: Watching David Kay's interview on television this morning was encouraging and frustrating. Encouraging: David Kay repeated to Tony Snow an impressive amount of finds, including botulinum precursor ordered into a scientist's refrigerator; and the factual tidbit that Iraq houses dozens of weapons caches, some as large as [50] square miles, twenty-six of which are high-priority and have not been searched yet. Frustrating: Kay himself was annoyed at how newspapers and other media ignored almost all of it. Which makes this recap, published in the International Herald Tribune and reprinted in the New York Times, important to offest the politicized obfuscation we saw a couple of days ago. Good for them.

The interest of some in Washington to stick Iraq with a reconstruction loan - cop-out national security at its worst - is offensive enough. Raising taxes is economically unwise, poorly reasoned (some hikes to be flung several years down the road) and a not-so-subtle trojan horse ("No New Taxes II") for Bush. But it's unconscienable for Congress to wax statesman with these proposals when available resources are obvious, and within their very oversight. From the Wall Street Journal today:

There's another way to offset [the $87 billion aid package]. Congress could clean up some of the waste, fraud and abuse in the federal budget. House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle has been pushing his fellow House chairmen to do just that. Today he will announce what they've turned up. And, wouldn't you know it, they found $85 billion to $100 billion that could be saved even without cutting any services.

The Congressional Budget Office has found that Medicaid effectively reimburses states twice for the same administrative services. Ending that practice would save $3.7 billion over ten years. The CHIPS program, which is supposed to insure children, is providing health care for childless adults in at least two states, according to the General Accounting Office. Ending that would save $330 million.

Competitive bidding on durable medical equipment could save Medicare $13.4 billion over 10 years. And another $25.4 billion could be saved by bringing home health payments in line with actual home health-care costs, says GAO. And don't forget Social Security: Legislation now in the House would save $1.4 billion over 10 years by looking for recipients who defraud the government by hiding income, and save an additional $655 million by withholding checks to fugitive felons and parole violators.

We can be assured that there's plenty more waste, redundancy and frivolous investment in wartime to be found in a $2 trillion budget. (Scratch what I said earlier about Republicans as a whole - there's always hope to be found in the House). Congressional opponents of the Iraqi aid are fond of talking about sacrifice: it's just as well they find a very personal meaning for the word.

Rumors of the prime minister's premature retirement were, in fact, greatly exaggerated:

The government today comfortably won a vote on Iraq at its Bournemouth conference - after a two hour debate which saw pro-war delegates outnumber and out-clap critics by about two to one.

...For the government, Ann Clywd, the prime minister's human rights envoy in Iraq, broke down in tears as she described the sight of 10,000 skeletons in a mass grave in Iraq she witnessed earlier this summer.

She received a standing ovation from around one third of the closely split audience when she concluded: "I believe Tony was right to end the evil that was Saddam Hussein."

Not only has Tony Blair removed the threat of losing office, he's ably convinced a majority of political allies and rivals to help keep Britain on course. The speeches he made were among his finest. A skilled politician and national leader, on the right side of history, wins again.

As per my finger-snap title, if only Action Jackson were over in Baghdad, embracing "all the colors of the rainbow" as Iraqis prepare to apply measured care to swift progress in drafting a constitution. French, one-month-and-out anarchical nonsense aside, we should expect a full range of disagreements, walkouts, journals, appeals to the populace and even some Federalist Paper letters in news publications. It won't be polite all the time - nor will it be intellectually dull. That will be something to look forward to. Until then, Iraqis themselves know the significance of the document they will begin to craft:

"It's impossible to do it in six months as Mr. Powell wants," said council member Dara Noureddine, the council's liaison with the committee. "It's unreasonable. It takes more time than this - much more."

Noureddine, the council member most involved in determining how to draft the constitution, said in an interview today that Iraqis first need to decide how to select the drafters. Then those people will have to be chosen. Once they finally gather to begin drafting the document, they will have to sort through a raft of contentious issues, including whether to adopt a presidential or parliamentary system, and whether Islam is recognized as the sole basis for laws. Resolving those matters almost certainly will involve lengthy debates among not just the delegates but politicians, religious figures and other prominent members of Iraqi society.

"The most difficult battle will be the battle of the constitution," said Noshirwan Mustafa, a senior official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the country's two large Kurdish political parties. Noureddine and other Iraqi leaders insisted that the entire process cannot be accomplished in less than a year. "This is our future," he said. "This is for the next generation, not just for the next few years. One should not be hasty in formulating the constitution."

Some Iraqis are eager to see the occupation end, constitution or not - that's probably nothing to worry about, a bit of nationalist bravado and domestic posturing to win popular support. But Iraq leaders should accept the fact that the United States will simply not leave the country without a pluralist, self-governed society in place. One of America's expectations is that Iraq's new leaders are sensible and considerate, not impatient.

Glenn Reynolds wonders about the constitution's specifics and offers some bloggers' thoughts, particularly on Federalism. Given the tentative nature of even the preliminary negotiations, it's unlikely anything concrete exists. Nor can assurances from any one constitutional delegation, when the convention begins, be appreciated as more than part of the political and legal debate. With that in mind, we can return to the standards set in place by the occupational authority:

L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator of Iraq, has said the constitution will be "written by Iraqis, for Iraqis." But he has also said the Bush administration expects the final document to embody principles adopted during a U.S.-sponsored conference of Iraqis in April near the ancient ruins of Ur. Those principles include federalism, democracy, nonviolence, a respect for diversity and a role for women.

Those are about as serious as the legal requirements established by the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in Japan: opening of elections, privatization of property, a breakup of the zaibatsu plutarchy, among many other individual rights. Will the Iraqis be expected to follow the rules to properly found liberty - including Federalism? Judging by Bremer's consistent performance, and adherence to and enforcement of liberal fundamentals - not least the major economic victory in the Finance Ministry last week - we have no reason to doubt that federalism and the separation of powers will help define modern Iraq.

ALSO: A look at our own Constitutional Convention of 1787. The process wasn't linear, taking several months - even with an existing body of fair laws like the Articles of Confederation and without the baggage of modern, Stalinist tyranny.

The autocrat, Wahhabist-promoting Saudis won't be sending any of their armed forces into Iraq. Seeing as how Saudi nationals, under the flag of terrorism, are already underway in the country, we can most likely agree that Iraq's reconstruction doesn't need any more meddling, er, aid from Riyadh.

Here's hoping the Bush administration made the proposition as unattractive to the kingdom as possible.

Saying goodbye to office colleagues yesterday evening, I climbed into my car and turned the key. The radio, left on from my drive to and from lunch, started to play. Roger Hedgecock on.

Hedgecock? I looked at the dashboard clock - it was what it should have been, a little bit before 5 o’clock. We’d all left a little early on account of it being Friday. So - why Hedgecock?

Roger Hedgecock is the former mayor of San Diego and host of a West Coast radio show. He’s Rush Limbaugh’s understudy, the most frequent fill-in for when Limbaugh is on vacation or at a doctor’s appointment - in fact, Hedgecock had taken the helm just a couple of days ago. But not today. The local AM station, WTAM, plays Rush from noon to three. It’s also the carrier of Cleveland Indians game coverage. Sometimes - too often, I say - the Indians play afternoon games and WTAM bumps Rush for baseball. They replay his show later - at night. Not during another show, certainly not that of local screed-jay Mike Trivisonno, who airs right after Rush.

I’ve never been much of a fan of old Triv: his repertoire usually leaves me with a vacant stare. You see, living your entire life in a suburb on the far edge of Greater Cleveland insulates a man from most of the city’s culture and events. Old neighborhoods, the club scene in the flats, the Rich East Side and the Far East Side; they usually don’t ring a bell. Cleveland’s politics, owned by Democrats for decades, are as familiar to me as Timbuktu’s. (Our Congressional district reelected Dennis Kucinich by a margin of four to one last year, can you blame me?)

Then there’s sporting. Browns? They almost went to the Super Bowl in, oh, 1987 but John Elway’s Broncos managed to ensure that Denver could be destroyed in post-AFC Championship celebration riots instead. Indians? They put together a dream team in 1994, made it to the World Series in 1997 and lost to the Marlins. I watched the limp final game - I’m certain the numb anticlimax affected the team as fatally as the fans. It’s like reading The Natural after watching the movie and discovering that Robert Redford’s literary counterpart strikes out; yes, dear, it ruins your day. In 2001, Mephistopheles returned and the Tribe went back to living on the standings’ ground floor. Now, I’m always pleased by either team’s occasional success - but you won’t catch me following them. It usually takes me a few seconds to recognize a mascot idol sitting on someone’s front porch. Ah, yes. The sports teams.

And that’s all Triv’s domain - Cleveland sports, living, politics, miscellany. The man himself has got a face only a mother could love; but then his paycheck is from radio broadcasting, not half-naked catwalk modeling. Even if he weren’t a hopeless chain-smoker, the guy has a voice that was microphone-ready by age twelve. He’s full of vinegar and the other famous, acidic liquid; but don’t call him “obnoxious.” Call him...“bombastic.” Triv’s humor is self-deprecative and usually only mildly offensive; his co-host and regular guests round out an entertaining cult show for Clevelanders.

The operative word above is “usually.” I’d never heard of Mike Trivisonno before I came back home from college - remember what I said about unfamiliarity. One day, I’d left him on after Rush’s show had ended, and it was only a few minutes before I overheard some of Triv’s choice remarks: the topic was guns, the specifics of which I’ll never know. But when the phrase “gun nuts” came out of the kitchen counter radio’s speaker, it took only a stomp from across the room for me to shut old Triv off and resolve to give the fellow a pretty wide berth.

As with yesterday, I’ll occasionally catch a second or two of Trivisonno’s show, revving up the car to drive home, before I stick in a CD. Not long after September 11th, I had the misfortune of listening to and continuing to listen to one of the least-made-for-professional-radio-broadcasting ramblings in all of amplitude modulation’s history. It was the picture of a man who should have taken a day or two off - a bona fide meltdown for thousands of open-mouthed listeners. Triv swerved like a drunk on a slalom course, with a “Senator’s Son” here and a “They attacked civilians for what our government did” there. He didn’t sound like he meant what he was saying but true enough, there he was, hosting a mass-media event and bloody well saying it all. I kept the radio on long enough to hear a couple of callers so irate they must have singed Triv’s earphones - before slamming it off.

A minor brouhaha bubbled up from the episode. People called for Trivisonno’s release from the station. Apologies were made, Triv and the station, implicit and explicit. Triv tucked his tail and bit his lip, and for a few months afterward dealt with tense listeners easily put over the edge by his occasional goof-off antic.

I still don’t listen to the man regularly, but it’s to be sure that Triv hasn’t run his mouth off a cliff since.

As I pulled out of the office parking lot, destination apartment, Roger Hedgecock pressed on. He was reading something - a news report? No, it was too lively and illustrative. An opinion column? It was about Iraq. And it was glowing in idealism - it couldn’t have been a news report, then.

When Roger was done, Mike Trivisonno came on. I had been listening to Roger Hedgecock on the Rush Limbaugh show from two days prior, reading a letter bursting with pride and optimism from Navy Seabee Senior Chief Art Messer, stationed with the 22nd Naval Construction Regiment in southern Iraq. Why was Triv playing it? Word of mouth about the press painting every report from the country shroud-black had found its way to Cleveland’s favorite blue-collar, cynic jock. And the idea stuck in his head. “You should have listened to this the other day,” Triv beamed, “it was some classic radio.” Letters like these, he went on, even if slight exaggerations, balance persistently negative coverage from traditional news sources.

There ought to be a saying: When Cleveland knows about something, the secret’s out. Thousands of listeners - the same people who called and wrote in droves responding to Triv’s unhinged performance two years ago - must have heard the good news spread by a radio jock they know. They undoubtedly joined millions more across the country. Even the elites are catching on. Dan Rather finally found the frequency (Kenneth) - so how long can it be until Jennings and Brokaw offer stately explanations for their networks’ FIRE/MURDER news-gathering techniques, and promise to include in future broadcasts the hundreds of substantive metro stories straight from Iraq?

The Trivisonno show went to commercial and as I rounded a corner, I ran headlong into one of those moments where you know the momentum has shifted to your champion. Eight o’clock at night on an election night, hearing about the first returns that scream nothing but “landslide” - that’s what one of these moments feels like. I slipped a CD in - U2's The Unforgettable Fire. Track two, “Pride.”

It’s one of my favorite songs - written by Bono and the gang twenty years ago as a eulogy for Martin Luther King, Jr., but it aged well into a timeless celebration of vision and courage. "Auld Lang Syne" for stadiums. Here’s the king: it simply doesn’t stop rocking until fadeout. Same chord pattern save for the bridge, over and over; just a few rhythm and arrangement change-ups to keep things fresh. But it’s exactly that insistent, faithful cadence that begs volume be wrenched to eleven, every play.

I shuttled down a side street, music blaring, knowing that in a few years Iraqis themselves would be hanging clothes lines, mowing lawns and playing in the street as cars blaring classic radio rock passed. Only they'd enjoy themselves without the subtle dread they'd all feared would stay with them throughout their lives. The letter came back, line by line:

The railroad is running again! The railroad has not run since 1991. In the city of Hillah, the power stays on 24 hours a day and it has more power than prior to the war. Some Iraqis are worried about getting too much food from the coalition because they don't have enough room in their homes to store it...

...The markets are open...

...Most of the Iraqi men want to buy Chevy pickups...

...In the Universities, the girls have tossed their deshakas (long black dresses with head and face coverings) and are now wearing western style clothes and even some are wearing short sleeves. The favorite drink is Pepsi, followed by Coke. They want us to bring them any and everything American. Any item made in America or that is from America is worth money over here...

Soon enough, the American market will brace for an Iraqi invasion - a fleet of imports unique to Iraqi culture and abilities. The same know-it-alls who pronounced a struggling, late 1940s Japan as DOA never heard of transforming robots, computer chips or animé. Their journals are sitting on the same ash heap of non-prescience as the think tank predicting one human being for every three square feet of earth by the mid-1980s.

...The Iraqis have a saying about the situation over here "Every day is better than the day before". Life is flowing back in to this country and it is fun to watch and I am so glad I got to watch it happen...

...They are starting businesses everywhere. They want to build shopping malls and factories, they want McDonalds and Jack in the Box and Pizza Hut. Of course anything American Fast Food, because of the stories the troops are telling them...

One of the many tragic mischaracterizations of American culture - a culture derived from the freedoms protected by the Constitution - is that it is only about ethnicity or geography. I’m as white as snow, but neither Anglo-Saxon nor noble-born; that guy over there is as dark as night. We’re both Americans, contributing to and receiving from a common society. The Iraqis, from Messer’s letter, want to be more like us. Let them - freedom from natural rights doesn’t carry a patent. America didn’t invent it - we were simply the first country to understand how to establish and fortify it. Liberties draw the best from any man or woman, anywhere in the world. When people want to be more like Americans, what they’re really pining for is the freedom through which they will become more like themselves.

Freedom unfetters human potential and it dooms authoritarianism and extremism to wither and rot. That’s the real story, here. Go home, Eeyore. Take the black cloud with you, Joe Btfsplk. The soldiers know better; the American people know better; old Triv can count himself in. Most of all, the Iraqi people know better. In a short time, peaceful and inspirations to their fellow Arab, they’ll have to give the journalism noir, trying to count them out at the start, at least a good grin.

Just back from the far side of the moon? You're in time to shop for Chief Wiggle's toy drive for Iraqi kids. I'll be heading to the necessary stores tomorrow.

Bill Hobbs on weapons of mass destruction:

Something struck me upon re-reading the transcript of President Bush's Address to the United Nations General Assembly - his mentioning of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs without mentioning the lack, so far, of finding big caches of such weapons in liberated Iraq (at least that has been revealed publicly).

...Does [he] sound to you like a president who thinks there is the slightest chance we won't eventually prove beyond a shadow of Howard Dean's doubt the existence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? Not at all. It sounds to me as if President Bush is absolutely sure - most likely based on intel and still-classified evidence - that weapons not only existed before the war, but exist today, and that it is only a matter of time before the proof and the weapons are revealed.

Commenter Dave Sheridan adds that he anticipates a widely visible revelation next spring. I've believed for some time now that the White House is quietly watching the historical record fill up with its opponents' insistence on an absence of bio-chem-atomics and relevant programs in Ba'athist Iraq.

With Kay to reveal his findings soon, we may witness certain members of Congress and the political establishment looking very nervous and growing very quiet before they get clobbered by mounds of incontrovertible evidence publicly presented in a few months. If national security remains a major election issue in November of next year, quite a few political careers could be irreparably damaged - not least the nominee from the Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom have made some hay of the weapons issue.

Regardless of what the president has planned, politicans are unwise politically, logically, and morally to indirectly defend Saddam Hussein while attempting to damage Bush in lieu of conspicuous piles of weapons and facilities. Especially those who stated beliefs to the contrary under the same circumstances in 1998.