Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

The opportunity timetable

Amir Taheri:

IN the circles opposed to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, one word is making the rounds these days: timetable. Having failed to stop the war that liberated Iraq, and with their hopes of an insurgent triumph dashed, they are now focusing on one issue: the withdrawal of the U.S.-led Coalition forces.

The truth, however, is that a timetable has been in place from the first day of the war that ended the Ba'athist tyranny in 2003. In that timetable, the Coalition's military presence in Iraq is linked, as it should be, to the program for the nation's political reconstruction.

In other words, the Coalition forces are in Iraq to accomplish a precise political task, and not to provide the United States or any other foreign power with a forward base in the Middle East.

The goal was to take power away from a small clique led by Saddam Hussein and hand it back to the people of Iraq. The idea was not to impose democracy on Iraq, as some anti-liberation circles claim. The idea was to remove impediments to democratization.

Today, the Iraqis are not forced to create a democracy. But they have a chance to do so, if they so wish. The Coalition's task was to get them that chance. And in that sense, the Iraq project has been a tremendous success.

The task consists of a series of objectives — many already attained, often in the teeth of diplomatic chicanery by the anti-liberation powers and a nihilistic insurgency by the largest coalition of terrorists in the region's recent history.

Any checklist would show that the Iraq project has been more successful than Saddam nostalgics claim:

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Checkout his check list of accomplisments.