Here:

THE VITAL TASK: What matters now - the only thing that matters - is that we get the current end-game in Iraq right and find and kill or capture Saddam and his dead-enders. As for the dangerous situation in that country: who can be surprised? Did people really believe it would be one Tocquevillean orgy as soon as the Baathists were deposed? Did we really hope that the vast Baathist military that disappeared at the climax of the war would literally evaporate?

The fact that the three major groups - Sunni, Shia and Kurd - are still on board for a representative government is far more significant than the resilience of a few Baathist left-overs, coordinated by Saddam.

Safire was right yesterday. We are still at war over there against the Baathists and much of the current criticism of the occupation as a whole is ultimately designed to weaken domestic support for the vital task in front of us.

That's what the anti-war left and right are now trying to do. They lost the battle before the war and during the war. They now desperately need the U.S. to lose the post-war.

It's time for those of us who supported the liberation of Iraq to fight back against this potentially catastrophic gambit. For the U.S. to give up now, to withdraw, or to show any vacillation in the face of great progress in the Middle East, would indeed make matters far worse than if we had never intervened in the first place. We have an obligation to make it work. If some Democrats continue to argue that we should cut our losses, they are simply not ready for government.