Rice pulls out the whip to get the Iraqis moving

Charles Duelfer quietly closed one chapter on Iraq this week while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Iraqis to open the next chapter more quickly.

Mr. Duelfer filed the final report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. There weren't any before the United States invaded, he found, concluding that United Nations weapons inspections had worked. There also is no evidence, despite what some Bush administration apologists had suggested, that weapons were transferred to Syria. Mr. Duelfer's team further found that, after the invasion, U.S. intelligence officials botched interviews with captured Iraqi scientists that might have provided information about Saddam Hussein's conventional weapons programs and that looters hauled off some materials after Baghdad fell.

The newly active insurgency -- which in the past week has killed scores of Iraqis and several U.S. soldiers -- reemphasizes that conventional explosives and firearms posed the real threat. It has become clear that President Bush won't hold anyone accountable for the chapter Mr. Duelfer has closed. As a practical matter, it is more important now to focus on helping Iraq form a stable government that can build a competent security force. Frustration with delays following January's elections spurred Dr. Rice to push Kurdish and Shiite officials to appoint a Cabinet so the elected assembly can get on with writing a constitution. Dr. Rice correctly judged that delays and bickering encouraged insurgents.

By Tuesday, U.S. cajoling had had some effect; a Cabinet could be approved today. The fact that Dr. Rice had to intervene was a setback; the administration needs to avoid any appearance that it secretly is installing the new government. So another setback -- that U.S.-backed former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was excluded from the Cabinet -- might be a good thing.
Mr. Allawi's ouster, however, raises the risk that the new government will be more theocratic than the administration had hoped. There also still is tension between the Kurds, who want to retain sovereignty over three northern provinces and reclaim some of the region's oil fields, and the majority Shiites. The exact role of Sunnis, who were Hussein's favored group, also remains a potential flash point.

Can the assembly write a constitution? Will the United States intervene if an Islamic fundamentalist state emerges, or is public pressure to leave so great that the Bush administration will accept any outcome? What role will oil play in U.S. policy, since functioning Iraqi pipelines could cut gasoline prices? If a democratic Iraqi government emerges on schedule by the end of the year, will it really make the insurgency less appealing to the ordinary Iraqis now joining it?

President Bush remarks often that "freedom is on the march" in Iraq. Not until enough Iraqis learn the cadence.