THEIR FIGHT NOW:

Iraqi security forces show early successes (Thanassis Cambanis, July 12, 2004, Boston Globe)

In the two weeks since they took back control of their country, Iraqi security forces are showing their mettle.

Last week, on the capital's busiest shopping street in Karada, an alert cop spotted a car bomb packed with 1,500 pounds of explosives that could have killed dozens.

Farther north, a platoon of Iraqi National Guard killed a pair of suicide bombers and dragged the explosives from the vehicle before they detonated.

Hundreds of Iraqi soldiers now patrol the streets, and dozens have been killed or injured in the past week in firefights with insurgents who seem to be training their sights on Iraqi forces.

This is what Iraqi control looks like so far.

In Iraq's first full week as a sovereign nation following the June 28 handover, its security forces -- fighting in the shadow of 160,000 foreign troops, most of them American -- have registered a striking, if limited, early record. The isolated but impressive successes offer a glimpse of a future in which Iraqis will set the tone for internal security, especially in areas where the interim prime minister chooses to evoke his newly adopted powers of martial law.

''You'd be surprised how well the Iraqis will do," said Steve Casteel, an American law enforcement veteran who is advising the Interior Ministry. ''It won't be as sophisticated as we might expect. But it's their country. They have an investment here."

One would hardly expect the Left to have been able to figure out that this is what would happen, but the far Right, which raged against Welfare and the "cycle of dependency" for fifty years, should have known what would happen once the Iraqis had to depend on themselves.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 12, 2004 9:56 AM