I have to disagree with Mary Madigan posting on Dean's World that President Bush went wrong in his speech here:
The terrorists, both foreign and Iraqi, failed to stop the transfer of sovereignty. They failed to break our coalition and force a mass withdrawal by our allies.
The lesson of this experience is clear: The terrorists can kill the innocent, but they cannot stop the advance of freedom
The advance of freedom, as relates to winning the war on terror, is largely in stopping the Islamists from killing their opponents before their opponents convince the great mass of the Islamic middle that Islamists go to hell for their apostasy. Preventing a Sistani from being killed by a Sadr is crucial to our war aims. Sistani is not an innocent. He is an allied combatant, fighting on the religious front. Sistani puts out a pronouncement and hundreds of thousands turn away from terrorism as it is distributed throughout the Shia world. Mosques that spew hate suddenly get a bit less full, and the recruiting funnel for suicide bombers runs a bit drier.
We simply don't have the ability to substitute for the dysfunctional muslim world's police forces without instituting a draft and bleeding our country dry. The best we can do is to protect the force generating seed of these societies so that they can raise their own armies and clean up their own societies. The tree of liberty must be fed with the blood of patriots and tyrants.