Report from Iraq

Senator Joe Leiberman (D-Connecticut) reports in todays Wall Street Journal Online (registration required) that his view of the democracy in Iraq is optimistic, as is the view of the Iraqis themselves:

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

When he speaks of progress, he is quite specific.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

My conversations with persons recently back from Iraq don't square with the Gloom and Doom we have heard recently from the mainstream press. Sure, there are still bombs, and there is still fighting, but folks I talk to are optimistic about the progress made in Iraq. Senator Leiberman's article seems to support the reports I am hearing.