Fouad Ajami has written a useful article on why it was a mistake for President Bush to apologize to the King of Jordan for the abuses at Abu Ghraib (which even I thought was a strange audience) and, all the more importantly, why it's an even bigger mistake to trust this UN envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, to do right by the Shiites.
I know that we have to put a non-American face on this occupation and liberation of Iraq, but let's not give away the store. Maybe Bush figures that, if the UN has some involvement, it will be seen as a concession to "multilateralism," which, if it fails, can be blamed, in part, on that same factor. But I don't see how average Iraqis can have much confidence in anything the UN does when that corrupt organization did all it could to keep them in bondage under Saddam.
30 June is not very far away now, and we have to have a few of our loose ends tied up in the meantime. Let's hope the merchant classes in the holy cities have the stroke to neutralize al-Sadr. Let's work to finish strong in Fallujah and consolidate our gains in the north and south. There are a lot of problems still, but most Americans aren't hearing the many, many good stories coming out of Iraq. We're not seeing, on the whole, that peace and prosperity are flourishing everywhere in Iraq that the insurgents and terrorists are not.
Don't lose the war, President Bush, just because the Left and their heroes in the terrorist cells are dominating the news. That would be a distortion leading to catastrophe.