A Full Stride Closer.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(EDITORIALS)(Editorial)

Iraq: A new government takes shape and self-rule takes a giant step toward reality. Spin this story as you will, but it's hard to ignore so much evidence of progress.

Reporters have been doing their usual best to give every bit of bad Iraqi news its due. One Reuters dispatch on the naming of the new president, Sunni tribal chief Ghazi Yawar, took pains to dampen any undue optimism:

"A car bomb that tore through the nearby offices of a Kurdish political party, killing and wounding several people, underlined the scale of the challenge the interim administration faces in organizing Iraq's first free elections in the new year."

Well, that's one interpretation. But it's not the only way to read the dual track of Iraq news, in which violence vies with unmistakable signs of forward movement. Could the real story be that the violence is failing? Events of the past week could argue for that point.

If the insurgents have any goal, it must be to disrupt the formation of a truly sovereign Iraqi government. What they need is anarchy or civil war after driving out the U.S. What they cannot have is a functioning Iraqi state acceptable to the majority Shiites and the leading minorities -- Sunni, Kurd, Christian.

But that's just the sort of government taking shape. It's early yet, but a couple of key points have been made to the wider world.