Why must we go to Baghdad for optimism?

Compare the optimism and perspective from this column with the perception promoted by the Democrats and the old media.

The young men of little education--earnest displaced villagers with the ways of the countryside showing through their features and dialect and shiny suits--who guarded me through Baghdad, spoke of old terrors, and of the joy and dignity of this new order. Children and nephews and younger brothers of men lost to the terror of the Baath, they are done with the old servitude. They behold the Americans keeping the peace of their troubled land with undisguised gratitude. It hasn't been always brilliant, this campaign waged in Iraq. But its mistakes can never smother its honor, and no apology for it is due the Arab autocrats who had averted their gaze from Iraq's long night of terror under the Baath.

If only those who hated America would rely on the truth, for a change, and put the politics and hatred aside. Absent the chronic lies, deceit, and distortion of reality coming from the left, we might all be enjoying good news from Iraq.

History does seem to repeat itself. Only the names of those Americans working to defeat America have changed.

WSJ - Iraq in the Balance