Continuing success in Iraq. 4000 female candidates. Walid Phares says, "The seeds of elections are now planted in Mesopotamia. With more than 140 political party and associations, hundreds of newspapers, publications, dozens of radio and TV stations, a mosaic is in existence."

I saw one of those counters on some looney blog totaling the cost of the war in Iraq. Well Washington as already outspent that with a few strokes of the pen, and that cost is just starting. Draining a swamp isn't fast, easy or cheap. It remains to be seen what kind of crop springs forth. I am a skeptic -- there is a great cleanup to be done, democracy requires freedom and vice versa, and the ground is poison -- but being a skeptic is just that. It means requiring proof, not saying you know something won't and can't be.