ONE OF THE most encouraging developments of the past 72 hours is the fact that most Iraqis are eager to have Saddam Hussein removed is finally seeping into the mainstream. New York Times reporter John Burns said on PBS the other day, “Iraqis have suffered beyond, I think, the common understanding of the United States from the repression of the past 30 years here. And many, many Iraqis are telling us now, not always in the whispers we have heard in the past, but now in quite candid conversations, that they are waiting for America to come and bring them liberty. . . . Can I just say that there is also no doubt–no doubt–that there are many, many Iraqis who see what is about to happen here as the moment of liberation.”

On Wednesday on CNN, Iraqi exile Zainab Al-Suwali reported, “I spoke with a friend who just came out of Iraq two days ago, and he told me the situation is very interesting inside Iraq because people are storing–buying a lot of food and storing it at homes, and also filling bags of sand, building bunkers. At the same time, they are very excited and very happy to get rid of Saddam soon. . . . The [Iraqi] government is waging war against us because they are afraid . . . they know how much they torture their own people. . . . And people inside Iraq, they don’t really believe what the [Iraqi] government is saying.”