No one should feel remorse or embarrassment for underestimating the vice grip Saddam holds upon the Iraqi people and the subsequent reluctance with which the relatively liberated population has welcomed us. Like September 11th's mass-murder designs, the depths to which evil men will sink are unfathomable by the sane; unpredictable. If we could foresee every atrocity, every scratching away at our understanding of human dignity we would live in perpetual fear and paralyzation. We would live as mock cattle, deprived of sentience in a terrified stupor.

In other words, we'd live like the most oppressed of oppressed people. John O'Sullivan taps into this rancid vein of the strongest's rule:

[W]hat happens when the cameras are switched off? Here is what a journalist from Arab News, Saudi Arabia's English daily, discovered when he took aside a young Iraqi man who had been chanting "With our blood, with our souls, we will die for you, Saddam" to television crews filming a Red Cross handout of food in an area under allied control. The young man later explained in private:

There are people from Baath here reporting everything that goes on. There are cameras here recording our faces. If the Americans were to withdraw and everything were to return to the way it was before, we want to make sure that we survive the massacre that would follow. ... In public we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else.

Iraqi "resistance" can be similarly explained. Iraq's regular forces are stiffened by the special security forces, in reality licensed thugs, that Saddam has recruited to sustain his regime against both popular discontent and military mutiny. Ordinary soldiers, not excluding officers, are forced into battle either with a gun at their backs or by threats to their family at home if they should fail to fight. In these circumstances surrendering may require more courage than advancing against a militarily superior enemy.

As the Arab News reporter concluded: "the people of Iraq are terrified of Saddam Hussein." And that includes the ordinary Iraqi soldier.

Those who predicted that resistance would collapse and the allies welcomed as liberators, as I did, made the reasonable assumption that this universal fear would dissipate when allied tanks came into view. But Saddam had reached exactly the same conclusion and, as the months of U.N. diplomacy dragged on, he set in place a structure of repression that would survive the mere arrival of the U.S. and British armies. He instilled in the Iraqi people a fear, rooted in the memory of how the first President Bush betrayed the Shiite uprising in Basra immediately after the Gulf War, that the liberation would be strictly temporary. He persuaded them in advance that the allies were mere birds of passage who, after an interval, would fly off and leave them to the ruthless revenge of a returning Baath party. He made them passive and suspicious of their own hopes.

Mortal fear has been a lasting victory of Saddam's authoritarian architecture and it will be a great, twisted monument for the allies to topple. In a couple of hours, I'll be addressing the so-called "winning of hearts and minds" of the Near East. On one hand, it will be a lengthy process - and, given the tenacity of evil men, a difficult one. It is altogether necessary for their sake as well as ours, however, not to mention a task we have successfully seen to completion before. Courage.

I left at 8 AM this morning for the funeral of my sister's father-in-law. I didn't know him well, but I knew him as a fine man. A sad loss, to be sure.

My brother-in-law's family was as warm and wonderfully eccentric as at Meg's wedding, so our celebration of life was enjoyable to say the least.

On the drive back from Pittsburgh, El Rushbo was on the radio. Good news: allies moving forward, Saddam nowhere to be found and General Richard Myers finally put to rest the nonsensical, anonymous, sour-grapes complaints about Rumsfeld.

And the Iraqi people, much to the disappointment of anti-liberation throngs, are beginning to overcome their fear of the Ba'athists.

A good day.

If the rule of law can be instituted and protected, the natural laws of self-determination and common good from within man himself will take over. What we seek in Iraq and beyond becomes simple math.

Bill Safire is a man of such meticulous, journalistic brilliance that The Onion once ragged on his likeness ordering "Two Whoppers Junior" the day after he ran for the border for "Two Tacos Supreme." I reserve my right to amateur's prerogative in my disagreement with his assessment that John Ashcroft has anything other than an assertive desire to protect the nation from devil's advocates chipping away at law under the guise of protecting liberties.

But Safire, in times trying our souls, is unmatched. He presents a list of "Snap Judgments" today in the Times (registering takes no more than thirty seconds; I did it myself this morning). I agree with them all but will give Safire and his paper the luxury of a full offering; here are the standouts:

3. Best evidence of Saddam's weakness: his reliance on suicide bombers for media "victories." Individual self-destruction may or may not terrorize a civilian population but is not a weapon capable of inflicting decisive casualties on, or striking fear into, a powerful army. (It does vividly demonstrate the Baghdad-terrorist nexus.)

4. Most stunning surprise: the degree of intimidation of Shiites in southern cities by Saddam's son Uday's Gestapo. When Basra falls, however, fierce retribution on these thuggish enforcers by local Shia may send a message of uprising to co-religionists who make up a third of Baghdad's populace.

7. Most overdue revelation by the Pentagon: that Russia has long been smuggling sophisticated arms to Saddam's regime with Syria's hostile connivance. Who suppressed this damning data for a year, and to what end? And is the C.I.A. still ignorant of the transmission to Iraq through Syria of a key component in rocket propellant from China, brokered by France?

10. Worst mistake as a result of State and C.I.A. interference with military planning: fearing to offend the Turks, we failed to arm 70,000 free Kurdish pesh merga in northern Iraq. Belatedly, we are giving Kurds the air, commando and missile support to drive Ansar-Qaeda terrorists out of a stronghold, but better planning would have given us a trained, indigenous force on the northern front.

13. Greatest wartime mysteries: What tales of special-ops derring-do await the telling? Who, in the fog of peace, will honor Iraqis inside Baghdad spotting military targets to save civilians? Will we learn first-hand of the last days of Saddam in his Hitlerian bunker? What scientists, murdered lest they point the way to germs and poison gases, left incriminating documents behind? Where are the secret files of Saddam's Mukhabarat, detailing the venal transactions with Western, Asian, Arab and Persian political and business leaders — and connections to world terror networks?

My sentiments exactly. America and her allies are fighting an incredible, just war in the face of evil's most elaborate corporeal infestations yet. With faith and fortitude, we'll be victorious.

Safire, too, is winning quite a prize for journalism. If more so-called periodical chroniclers of history would take his lead for reasoned, objective analysis, the broader media might just win back a few shreds of credibility.

I've spoken of it before: the Near East Culture of Death, a culture drawn the despair of bondage, bereft of natural expressions of freedom and taunted with the expediency of hatred. In the midst of everyone admitting the boundaries of their foresight and describing what has surprised them in nearly two weeks of Iraq's liberation, I must confess that I'm overwhelmed with the prospect of how deeply the culture of terror, suicide, and slaughter of the innocents has penetrated Iraq. I knew Saddam was an evil man, and secular as he and Iraq may be, he would never pass the opportunity to find common cause with Islamists; in one stroke he both deflects their reckless fury and gains a weapon against his enemies.

But even I took my theory of a sickened culture with a grain of salt. Consider it a humble recognition of my youth and amateur status.

I did not comprehend a Ba'athist party completely homologous to al Qaeda, means and ends indistinguishable; that only their uniforms and perverse, ancillary traditions diverge. One dogma. An authoritarian is an authoritarian. Tragically, I've been correctly understanding the source of the threat we face as ultimately singular.

Saddam must fall. After him, the Near East must be freed. By weapon, by peaceful revolt; the good soldier and the good statesman, Westerner or Easterner must prevail.

Tacitus mentioned this yesterday in passing. I'll dive in for analysis.

Left-leaning media and politicians are joining the pro-dictatorship movement of street jesters and heads of state with their darling, Saddam, for a newly established position in the diplomatic war over terrorism, freedom and bondage. A retreat was necessary, of course, because half of the arguments denouncing military action to liberate Iraq have indisputably faltered; as a counter, the left has combined its talent for sniping with its lack of knowledge of warfare. Five days and shocking, televised Ba'athist brutality is all the substance they require to mount their next assault: predicting doom, disaster, quagmire, and malfeasance. When that succumbs to reality, they'll beg, bark and browbeat to shove the gaggle of dishonestly dissenting nations into Iraq's future.

All in good time. But be aware: these sources, throngs, personalities or the intellectually pedigree, have no integrity on the matter. For all of their scatterguns fired a hail of frights, surely to descend upon the first stroke of allied weaponry, none materialized as direct response to the engagement of liberation; and as we say in the lucid world, "Death always 'Comes in Threes'" when you haven't got a time limit." Their goal is to rely on grace and short memories, to slip their coils of false prophecy and pop One by one:

1. The Arab Street Will Rise up as Never Before. Parades, sky-shot gun salutes and flag-burnings are an all-too-common occurrence in the Near East. It's business as usual. Most pro-Arab reports are talking the demonstrations up; other reports hold that only Syria, with its state-sponsored parades, are collecting any appreciable crowds. Until a popular coup appears even remotely possible, this fear is unfounded.

2. An Offensive Will only Invite More Terrorism. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Back to the "Death Comes in Threes" analogy; al Qaeda and friends were well aware as to the offensive's logical beginning and cells are not inserted into target countries until ready to act at any time. If plans were made by al Qaeda to incur damage upon America in retaliation, it's unlikely that they're on a strict two-week delay.

As for terrorist recruitments, the idea that mass extinction of terrorists and sponsors would invite Muslims to become terrorists is psychologically flimsy, these institutions whose primary targets are those unable to defend themselves. Every terrorist, from Yasser Arafat to Osama bin Laden, has thrived in his years from diffuse and often altogether absent response from the West. Bin Laden himself has opined on numerous orations that America's fecklessness emboldened his operations. Angry, futureless young Arabs - would-be followers - join to direct their anger at readily available prey, not to catch cluster bomblets and 5.75mm bullet fragments in their spine. Like all cowards, terrorists will disband under steady heat.

3. Civilian Casualties Will Be Immense. Some humanitarian charlatans predicted 100,000; hands were wrung about thousands of cruise missiles to be lobbed at Ba'athist installations and Saddam's means to war and oppression. Not only were America's technological abilities doubted; her intentions were, too. Casualties remain, literally, at a historical low.

4. Refugees Will Stream from Iraq and Create a Crisis in Neighboring States. Jordon, Iran and Turkey: borders are ghost towns. Syria: they're too busy shipping weapons into Iraq to notice. Bottom line: no refugee crisis that anti-liberation voices were expecting, for one reason or another.

Anti-liberation hasn't been right about one aspect of this operation. They're sitting proudly on top of the "cakewalk" straw man today, but from no position of historical accuracy. It's only too well known that they invoked worries of strung-out failure - imagine! A new Vietnam to rally 'round - in both Kosovo and Afghanistan, only to be silenced soon after by victory.

Opponents of this operation aren't for want of volume, but for wisdom. They'll flit from complaint to complaint. Who's going to continue taking them seriously?

With media east and west attempting to blame the White House for overly optimistic expectations of Iraq's liberation, it's curious that they haven't extended their search for such exhortations at any other sources. From Andrew Sullivan, who pulled a video clip from Fox News:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This war is going to be over in a flash, so we can wait to do that. You can always kill somebody next week. You can't bring them back next week, so... (APPLAUSE) (END VIDEO CLIP)

Returning to Fox, Bill Kristol leans into Clinton, as does liberal Juan Williams. Read the entry.

I, along with the rest of the pro-liberation ranks, could have told you months ago that deposing Saddam Hussein is in the interests of Iraqis - especially those who are far enough away from the Baghdad Butcher to reason without paralyzing fear:

Two leaders of the Iraqi exile community here in the Unites States say Saddam deliberately placed the Fedayeen Saddam-- a group of Saddam's loyal thugs -- in the cities of Karbala and Basra to maintain his brutal grip on power.

"Fedayeen Saddam have full authority," said Sheik Sadiq Khadem Mohammed, an Iraqi Shiite exile. "Since they start this organization to challenge Shia movement, they have full authority on the streets. They arrest. They torture. They kill in the streets and everyone knows about that."

[...]

Right now, Shiite leaders in exile say they are afraid this could happen again.

"They have no confidence that the Iraqi regime will be demolished this time because of the experience of 1991, so they are scared to say some words until now against the regime because maybe tomorrow the regime will come back again and get revenge on them," said Sheik Fidhel Al Sahlani, a Shiite Iraqi exile.

And for those in the anti-liberation cadre who admit to being without any alternative solution but one opposed to military action:

"We welcome the war because Saddam is a dictator," Mohammed said. "You cannot take him out of the power but by force that is for sure. We hope the war will be the process for peace in Iraq."

protesters: screaming, obstructing, defecating and complaining for, as Glenn Reynolds put it, "imaginary Arabs."

No, no, Islamists and Pan-Arabists would never have common cause.

Found at Ba'athist headquarters in Nasiriyah. It's been a year and a half since September 11th, yes - so this could simply be "immoral support." But that alone defies the smug conclusion that terrorists and dictators would remain indefinitely at odds because of their methodologies, regardless of the fact that they're all cut from the same bestial will, the human-domination cloth.

And if it's not simply sociopathic cheerleading, quite a few feet will be planted firmly in quite a few mouths. And the necessity for destroying terrorism through the dismantling of authoritarian regimes, not to mention democratization, will be well-vindicated.

Morocco may have modestly motioned to America the movement of mass monkeys, matchless in their mine-clearing mastery.

Alliteration off: Morocco has, according to what I'd initially mark as a highly suspect UPI report, offered the United States' Iraq force an unspecified number of monkeys whose trained purpose is to seek out and detonate land mines.

This is simultaneously awful and self-suffocatingly hilarious, especially if said monkeys are dressed up in mock dictators' uniforms with matching hat, boots and oversized overcoat, bedecked with medals. Ooh-ooh-ahh-WHAM!