It will be some months before the news media recognize it, and a few months more before they acknowledge it, but the war in Iraq is all but won. The situation is roughly analogous to the battle of Iwo Jima, which took place 60 years ago this month. It took 35 days before the island was declared secure, but the outcome was clear after day five, with the capture of Mt. Suribachi.

Proof of this was provided by Sen. Hillary Clinton. Iraq is functioning quite well, she said in a press conference in Baghdad Feb. 19. The recent rash of suicide attacks is a sign the insurgency is failing, she said.

When politicians like her start flocking to Iraq to bask in the light of its success, then you know that the corner has been turned.

Many of the brave people in the suddenly democratic Arab streets are inspired by America, and by George W. Bush himself. The president clearly understands this, but, in one of the most frustrating paradoxes of the moment, this vision is rather more popular among the peoples of the Middle East than among some of our top policymakers.

For anyone to suggest to this president at this dramatic moment, that he should offer a reward to Iran for promising not to build atomic bombs, or that we should seek a diplomatic "solution" to Syria's oft-demonstrated role in the terror war against our friends and our soldiers, is a betrayal of his vision and of the Iranian, Israeli, Lebanese and Syrian people.

Yet that sort of reactionary thinking is surprisingly widespread, from leading members of congressional committees, from the failed "experts" at State and CIA, and even some on the staff of the National Security Council.

Bit by bit, we are getting a fuller picture of our enemies on the ground in the Middle East, and the fanciful legend of a bunch of religiously inspired fanatics is eroding. If only someone could convince our so-called intelligence agencies to step away from their false assumptions (Porter Goss was on display last week, babbling about the "Sunni insurgency," as if that nonsense had not been exploded 30 years ago), we might make more progress.

We are engaged in a regional war against a terror network that cannot be reduced to a simple ethnic or religious element. The network is bound together by a common hatred of us and our friends and allies, not by a single religious fanaticism, and the terrorists come in all shapes and descriptions.

Their effectiveness is largely due to support from the terror masters in foreign countries, and we cannot win the battle of Iraq without destroying the terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riyadh. There is no escape from this destiny. If they survive, we lose.

I’ve received a number of letters regarding the constancy of the speed of light as discussed in Aristotle, Einstein, and Ayn Rand . They ask about an argument claiming that the speed of light is slowing down.

The basis for asserting that the universe is billions of years old with galaxies billions of light years away is substantially based on what’s called the red-shift. It’s like a train whistle with its sound waves bunched up coming towards you, then the pitch shifts dramatically as the train passes by with the sound waves stretched out. Light waves from sources racing away from us (such as distant galaxies) are shifted towards the infra-red part of the spectrum. The amount of the shift indicates the distance the light source is from us, because the speed increases with the distance.

The claim is that light from distant galaxies is not red-shifted at random but is “quantized,” grouped into “quantum bands.”

Has there ever been a more dramatic moment than this one for the Middle East? The whole region is boiling, as the failed tyrants scramble to come to terms with the political tsunami unleashed on Afghanistan and Iraq.

The power of democratic revolution can be seen in every country in the region. Even the Saudi royal family has had to stage a farcical "election." But this first halting step has fooled no one. Only males could vote, no political parties were permitted, and only the Wahhabi establishment was permitted to organize. The results will not satisfy any serious person.

As Iraq constitutes a new, representative government, and wave after wave of elections sweep through the region, even the Saudis will have to submit to the freely expressed desires of their people.

Free elections do not solve all problems. Many of the fascist tyrants of the last century were enormously popular, and won huge electoral victories; Stalin was truly loved by millions of oppressed Soviets; and fanatics might win an election today in some unhappy lands. But this is a revolutionary moment, we are unexpectedly blessed with a revolutionary president, and very few peoples will freely support a new dictatorship, even one that claims Divine Right from Allah.

But the wheel turns, as ever. Such moments are transient, and if they are not seized, they will pass, leaving the bitter aftertaste of failure in dry mouths and throttled throats.