The Mask of Warka

How this Bill Safire article got inked onto the pages of the New York Times is a small miracle. Excerpt:

Acting on another tip, searchers were directed to a garden near Tikrit, where they found a buried cache of weapons, including 23 missiles capable of shooting down aircraft.

Intelligence is the tool we need to find out where to dig. Those now so gleefully certain we will find no weapons of mass destruction may be surprised if — someday — an Iraqi technician, no longer terrified of reprisal or eager for reward, directs us to an easily hidden sack of deadly germs.

Such a find would be treated with suspicion by the legion with a stake in failure. Planted by the C.I.A., they'd say; or, old viruses left over from a previous era. Nothing that helps justify our overthrow of this generation's bloodiest tyrant — not human rights, not even a major victory in the war on terror — will they find acceptable.

Things are changing for the better in Iraq, much to the disappointment of the “failuremongers” (Safire’s invented word).