While no one was looking . . .

The Bush Administration has successfully allowed the transfer of power to a new Iraqi regime. We were all so focused on June 30 that the new Iraqi regime was able to assume its position with a minimum of fuss. Sure Bremer is still there, but only for a few more weeks and he's lamer than a one-legged duck with knee trouble.

Here's what David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen says about this development:

No one else will say this, so I will. The Bush administration has handled the transfer of power in Iraq more cleverly than anyone expected, including me. The summoning of the U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, looked like very bad news (a poisonous old Arab League chauvinist who brokered the sell-out of Lebanon to Syria in 1982). In grim moments, I believed the Bush people were cynically using him to wash their hands of Iraq, and as it were, dump the quagmire back in the swamp of the U.N. Instead, they froze the ground beneath Brahimi's feet, and skated rings around him, haggling behind his back with Iraq's new political heavyweights to leave him endorsing a fait accompli. If it were not vulgar, I would say the Bushies suckered the U.N. into signing on to the New Iraq through Brahimi.

Imagine that. A columnist with a major newspaper (and not an American or British one at that) crediting the Bush Administration with diplomatically outmaneuvering someone - anyone.