Here.

The verdict on Iraq remains open. Only time will tell whether Saddam's former fiefdom will become a normal and successful state, perhaps the first Middle Eastern domino to fall for democratization and reform, or whether political and religious entropy will prevail to send Iraq down a spiral of theocracy, or perhaps civil war and territorial disintegration.

Yet, if Iraq does pull through, the signs of slow and gradual progress were always there to see. I have been chronicling them in this series for nine months now, and when majority of Iraqis defied threats and cast their ballots of January 30, I was not surprised; the successful election was not a bolt out of the blue but a culmination of a year and a half of hard work by millions of Iraqis and citizens of the Coalition countries. To use Churchill's formulation, the election, of course, is not the end or even the beginning of the end, but hopefully the end of the beginning. Let us all hope that the journey will continue in the right direction.