Muslim

IN A SPEECH in Washington on February 26, 2003, President George W. Bush spoke of his hope that a change of regime in Iraq would herald the Arab nations' joining the worldwide movement toward democracy. Some critics dismissed this "pious hope," arguing that Arab culture, and Islamic civilization generally, were unready for so momentous a transformation. Others questioned the president's sincerity, at a time when members of his administration were still debating Iraqi self-rule after Saddam.

IN RECENT WEEKS, most Western media have reported the continuing attacks on U.S. troops in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, as tenacious resistance by defeated Baathists, aided by local Sunni Muslims enraged at the soldiers' alleged mishandling of crowds, which has led to fatal clashes.

HERE ARE the first few grafs of a dispatch from Baghdad yesterday by Carol Rosenberg of the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service:

The Iraqi capital these days appears to be awash in gunmen waving or shouldering automatic rifles. Members of a Sunni Muslim-led exile force suddenly set up checkpoints and snarl traffic in one neighborhood. Kurdish bodyguards screen visitors outside political party offices in another.

WHILE WESTERN MEDIA and politicians peddle their alarums in the aftermath of Iraq's liberation, focusing on Syria and Iran, attention should also be paid to Saudi Arabia. Throughout the military campaign, the royal regime publicly sought to maintain its alliance with the United States without reining in the venomous rhetoric of its religious bureaucracy opposing Western influence in the Islamic world.

RELIGIOUS FIGURES who opposed the liberation of Iraq have a lot of explaining to do. Fashioning themselves prophets of peace, they caustically denounced the "rush to war." Having granted the United Nations an almost transcendent moral authority, they declared Operation Iraqi Freedom an "immoral" act of aggression. In the months leading up to the conflict, they made a litany of brash claims and gloomy predictions--all proven to be utterly false.

Take their suggestion that Saddam Hussein was not the devil many made him out to be.

ON THE IRAQI WAR FRONT, Sunday, March 23 was a blood-red day for the terrorist Wahhabi movement, funded by "our Saudi allies" and aiming at control over world Islam.

First, terrorism struck in the early hours, from within the ranks of the U.S. armed forces. Army captain Christopher Scott Seifert, 27, was killed and 15 servicemen were wounded in an attack on the command area of Camp Pennsylvania, the rear base in Kuwait for the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. A second serviceman has now died of wounds suffered at Camp Penn.

One of the unit's members, Sgt.

FOR MONTHS, ARAB- AND MUSLIM-AMERICAN lobby groups have passionately spoken out against war with Iraq, citing the potential for everything from the mass murder of Iraqi babies to the creation of tens of thousands of baby bin Ladens. Warnings of dire consequences have flooded underground Internet chat rooms frequented by the most vitriolic voices in these groups.

Rarely did any of these activists cite the destruction Saddam Hussein has wrought on the Iraqi people or condemn his terror-enabling Baathist regime.

New York

UNDER THE ADAGE "save us from our friends," France's president Jacques Chirac has added to his long list of reasons for opposing a U.S.-led campaign to disarm Iraq the desire to "protect" Americans from fighting "angry Muslims." According to a French Defense Ministry official quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Chirac "tells his generals that the Americans don't understand what they're getting into, . . . that they don't understand what it is like to fight angry Muslims." Chirac should know.

WAR IS SUCH a foregone conclusion that the interesting debates now revolve around postwar Iraq. Time magazine's cover story this week reports that the Bush administration has decided on an immediate course of action for the days and weeks following Saddam's fall: A wave of humanitarian aid will be distributed in the wake of the U.S.

Cincinnati

SOMETIME IN THE SECOND WEEK of January, Ed Stern, artistic director at Cincinnati's Playhouse in the Park, called Glyn O'Malley with an apology. "I don't think I've ever f--d a playwright over," Stern said, "the way I've f--d you." Five months earlier, the Playhouse, flagship of Cincinnati's arts establishment, had announced O'Malley as the winner of its Lazarus New Play Prize for Young Audiences. For several years the Playhouse had staged a traveling drama for high school students.

COLIN POWELL travels to the United Nations today to "make the case" for war in Iraq. He will detail Saddam Hussein's possession, ongoing development, and continued concealment of weapons of mass destruction. It's a solid case, and most Americans buy it. As Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) told me last week, "There is no doubt in my mind that if Saddam Hussein were put on trial for having weapons of mass destruction, he would be found guilty." Those predisposed to agree with us will find it compelling. So will most of the fence-sitters, including Russia.