It's always important to get liberals to stop complaining long enough to make a hard prediction. This week we will review liberal predictions on bringing democracy to Iraq.

When they weren't claiming the Iraq elections would not take place at all ? and, even if they did, the people wouldn't participate ? liberals were telling us that if we let those crazy Arabs vote, the Iraqi people would elect extremist Islamic mullahs hostile to the United States.

Well, the Iraq National Assembly completed filling out the cabinet this week, and it can now be said that this was liberals' laughably wrong prediction No. 9,856. (Or No. 9,857 if you count their predictions of ruinous global cooling back in the 1970s, which I don't because that could still happen.)

Iraq's first democratically elected government in half a century has a Shia prime minister and a Kurdish president and several Sunni cabinet ministers. In fact, toss in a couple of dowdy lesbians from the Green Party and it would look a lot like Vermont's state house.

Fat Muqtada al-Sadr saw his radical Shiite movement humiliated in the January elections. According to a recent poll by the International Republican Institute, two-thirds of Iraqis say Iraq is on the right track.

The minority Sunnis, who once held sway under Saddam Hussein and were told by American liberals to expect major payback from the Shiites under a democracy, were chosen by the majority Shia government for four cabinet positions ? including the not insignificant position of defense minister. Plus, the Sunnis might get a fifth if they can convince Rep. Ali Abu Jeffords to switch parties.

One of the Sunnis picked for a cabinet post turned it down on the grounds that he thought he was chosen simply to fill a Sunni quota. "I don't believe in sectarianism," he said, "I believe in democracy." So I'll be moving to Iraq soon to live in a country that forcefully rejects quotas.

Also this week, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said he would like a woman as his fourth deputy prime minister. It's as if the Taliban has risen from the dead!

Apparently ? like John Kerry and the Democrats ? I guess the Muslim extremists just didn't get their message out. Although "Green Zone Veterans for Truth" were also a factor.

What we've learned from this is: Talking to liberals is much more fun now that we have Lexis-Nexis.

In a Nov. 9, 2003, news article, the New York Times raised the prospect that "democracy in the Middle East might empower the very forces that the United States opposes, like Islamic fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia and Egypt."

Democracy in the U.S. might have put John Kerry in the White House, too, but you'll notice we didn't abandon the idea. Continued...