Freedom has sprung free
says Gerard Baker of The London Times

And the success in Iraq, intangible as it is, was never just going to be confined to the country itself. Look at the broader map of the Middle East.

In neighbouring Syria, another unlovely old regime is cornered. The push for freedom that began in Iraq is steadily wresting Lebanon away from its status as a fief of Damascus. The Syrian dictator is feeling the painful consequences of his attempt to halt the spread of liberty by the old fashioned method of assassination.

In Iran, the proximity to a liberated Iraq is alarming the theocratic thugs who run the country and energising their enemies in the rest of the population.

In Israel, the one people in the region for whom freedom is no novelty, will go to the polls early next year. It looks likely that they will give a new mandate to Ariel Sharon to pursue his unlikely mission of unilaterally settling with the Palestinians.

Don't miss The Iraq Story You Haven’t Heard: Joe Lieberman's.

You can read Sen Lieberman's words here

It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America.

Read every word of it.