BLOGGING WILL BE LIGHT AGAIN TODAY, but there’s lots of cool stuff elsewhere in the Blogosphere. Steven Den Beste has been on something of a roll of late, and The Command Post continues to bring you the latest minute-by-minute war news so that I don’t have to. Oxblog and Samizdata bring a trans-Atlantic perspective (and it’s later there, so they’ve had more time to post). And Bill Quick and Tim Blair have lots of posts, too.

UPDATE: Here’s more debunking of the claim on IndyMedia that the statue-toppling was staged.

And read this Mark Steyn column where he de-spins the (revised, new) doom-spinners. Excerpt:

1) “Iraq’s slide into violent anarchy” (Guardian, April 11). Say what you like about Saddam, but he ran a tight ship and you didn’t have to nail down your nest of tables: since the Brits took over, Basra’s property crime is heading in an alarmingly Cheltenhamesque direction. MBITRW (Meanwhile Back In The Real World): A year from now, Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs. . . .

10) America is already losing the peace. MBITRW: In a year’s time, Iraq will be, at a bare minimum, the least badly governed state in the Arab world and, at best, pleasant, civilised and thriving. In short: not a bad three weeks’ work.

Read the rest.

Oh, and read Matt Welch on the Cuban journalist show-trials — and the deafening silence (or worse) from some quarters in response. Is there a thug anywhere that the left will criticize these days?

HERE’S AN INTERESTING REPORT:

In the densely populated northeastern slum area of Saddam City, U.S. Marines pulled back to allow local people to hunt “mujahideen” volunteer fighters holed up in the area.

“The locals said they wanted to take charge of Saddam City and we said: ‘Roger that’,” Lieutenant-Colonel Lew Craparotta, commander of a Marine unit that moved back from the fringes of the suburb, told Reuters.

Local leaders told U.S. officers that non-Iraqi Arab fighters were still a threat in the mainly Shi’ite district.

“It’s much easier for them to identify the enemy than for us. We really can’t tell who is who,” Craparotta said.

The U.S. withdrawal will allow local men to carry weapons openly, set up checkpoints and cordon off areas where they suspect the Arab volunteer fighters are hiding.

Craparotta said it was not clear how many “third country nationals,” as the U.S. describes them, were in Saddam City.

Iraq has said thousands of volunteers from across the Arab world came to the country to help fight the U.S.-led invasion.

Local militia and the “mujahideen” fought fiercely through Friday night until after dawn, with the sound of sustained small arms and heavy machinegun fire suggesting substantial clashes between the two groups. U.S. forces were not involved.

I almost feel sorry for the guys who set off to “defend” the Iraqis, only to find themselves first scorned, and now hunted down and killed, by the very people they thought they were protecting. Kind of a post-Vietnam irony here, isn’t there? Not that I expect Robert Fisk to get it.

Sadly, the story doesn’t really shed much light on the how-armed-are-Iraqis question, though it seems as if these locals are arming themselves from looted Saddamite arsenals:

Baghdad is saturated with weapons, so both the militia and the Arab volunteer fighters have easy access to large arms and ammunition caches.

But that’s not the point of the story, so it’s hard to be sure.

JIM BENNETT LOOKS AT THE ROOT CAUSES OF ANTI-AMERICANISM:

However, it is worth considering the possibility that the root source of anti-Americanism in the world lies in the deep-rooted anti-modern tradition of Continental Europe.

Just as the Baathist movement lately of Iraq and still in power in Syria is a localized variant of European fascism, the broader anti-Americanism currently fashionable on all continents comes ultimately from what some have called the Industrial Counter-Revolution. This is a comprehensive category for the various reactions in Europe against the program of the Industrial and Democratic Revolutions, or liberalism in the classical sense — individualism, free markets, and technological and social progress.

Yep. They’re not just exporting inferior weapons and military strategies, but bad politics, too. Bennett, however, echoes one of my longstanding worries about Europe:

In considering the Holocaust, most attention has been given to its direct victims, as is appropriate. However, we must also consider that it was a form of self-administered lobotomy for Continental European culture.

It would not be surprising if the twin anti-modernist themes of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, now rapidly coalescing into a single nasty mess visible in many of the pro-Saddam demonstrations of the past year, become once again the predominant political-cultural theme in Western Continental Europe, overwhelming the decent and positive forces there that had previously prevailed.

This is a disturbing possibility, and I don’t see any easy answer for it. How do you reverse a lobotomy?

STILL MORE SUPPORT FOR THE DEN BESTE THEORY:

The french government insists that it has strictly enforced a tight embargo imposed on Saddam Hussein’s regime by the United Nations in 1990. But Saddam never lost his taste for French weapons or luxury goods. And evidence found by U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq suggests that—despite U.N. sanctions—the dictator continued to receive an abundant supply of both until very recently. . . .

U.S. forces discovered 51 Roland-2 missiles, made by a partnership of French and German arms manufacturers, in two military compounds at Baghdad International Airport. One of the missiles he examined was labeled 05-11 KND 2002, which he took to mean that the missile was manufactured last year. The charred remains of a more modern Roland-3 launcher was found just down the road from the arms cache. According to a mortar specialist with the same unit, radios used by many Iraqi military trucks brandished MADE IN FRANCE labels and looked brand new. RPG night sights stamped with the number 2002 and French labels also turned up.

The French? Violating United Nations sanctions? Why it’s almost as if the United Nations were merely a joke or something.

UPDATE: Here’s more from The New York Times:

The data reveals that firms in Germany and France outstripped all others in selling the most important thing — specialized chemical-industry equipment that is particularly useful for producing poison gas. Without this equipment, none of the other imports would have been of much use.

And click the link on the right to see an interesting graphic about where this stuff came from. This, bear in mind, is what is publicly known. I suspect that there’s a lot more that we’ll find out, and that it’s one of the things France and Germany were hoping to keep quiet.

UPDATE: Here’s more from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Baghdad — A Moscow-based organization was training Iraqi intelligence agents as recently as last September — at the same time Russia was resisting the Bush administration’s push for a tough stand against Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraqi documents discovered by The Chronicle show.

The documents found Thursday and Friday in a Baghdad office of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, indicate that at least five agents graduated Sept. 15 from a two-week course in surveillance and eavesdropping techniques, according to certificates issued to the Iraqi agents by the “Special Training Center” in Moscow.

The Russian government, which has expressed intense disagreement with the U. S.-led war on Iraq, has repeatedly denied giving any military or security assistance to the Hussein regime. Any such aid would violate U.N. sanctions that have severely limited trade, military and other relations with Iraq since 1991.

So much for the “let sanctions work” argument, I guess. Here’s more:

In late March, the Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that Russian intelligence agents were holding daily meetings with Iraqis, possibly with the intent of gaining control of the Mukhabarat archives if Saddam Hussein’s regime fell.

The newspaper said the archives could be highly valuable to Russia in three major areas: in protecting Russian interests in a postwar Iraq; in determining the extent to which Hussein’s regime may have financed Russian political parties and movements; and in providing Russia access to intelligence that Iraqi agents conducted in other countries.

The close relationship between the two countries is largely economic. Iraq and Russia are major trading partners, and Russia has billions of dollars tied up in deals with Iraqi businesses — including debts Iraq has owed to the Russians since the Soviet era.

I wouldn’t count on collecting, if I were the Russians. (Via The Command Post).

Perry DeHavilland, meanwhile, observes that:

What is a surprise is that Vladimir Putin has shown that not only is the Russian state still the enemy, its leaders are not nearly as smart as I had given them credit for, given they have been caught having given active support to the Ba’athists even to the extent of acting as an employment agency for assassins on their behalf.

To have squandered such a large pool of political capital and good will by continuously passing intelligence and weapons to the Iraqis right up to the start of the war is utter madness. Did the Russians think any outcome was possible in the long run other than an Allied victory over the Ba’athist regime? And surely once that fact is grasped, how could they think that news of their treachery would not eventually come to light?

What possible benefit could the Russian state gain from this move? Is this going to make honouring Russian contracts with the fallen Ba’athist regime more likely or less likely in US dominated post-war Iraq? Were they hoping Putin’s good buddy Tony Blair would pressure the Americans into a softer line regarding Russian economic interests in Iraq? If so, I wonder how Blair feels about his private diplomatic conversations being relayed to the Iraqis by the Russian intelligence services.

It is a terrible thing to live in a world filled with enemies, but if Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussain are the measure of our foes then at least we can comfort ourselves that we are facing opponents who are not just weak, they are self-deluded and quite frankly stupid.

For the stupidity of our enemies, we must always be grateful. I suspect, however, that Putin was being badly advised on the likely outcome of the war by these incompetent Russian generals who thought that the United States couldn’t win, except perhaps by carpet-bombing. Of course, that just makes Putin foolish for listening to them, when he should have known better.

DeHavilland has more comments here. And Jeff Jarvis is unimpressed with the Germans.

HERE’S MORE on how what is appropriately called that “wretched RAVE Act” passed Congress.

As I’ve said repeatedly, the legislation is a disgrace, and everyone associated with it should apologize and resign in disgrace.

Not that anything like that will happen. But that’s what should happen.

MICKEY KAUS on Castro’s executions:

Castro has celebrated the arrival of Yoko Ono and N.Y. media bigs by starting to execute people after quick trials. … The condemned were hijackers of ferry boats who were trying to get to the U.S., not mere dissidents. Still … Nobody was hurt in the attempted hijacking. … If these people were executed in the U.S. after such rudimentary procedures– the hijacking was only nine days ago! — Steve Earle would be writing heartbreaking songs about them. (And don’t the French march in the streets when those ugly Americans talk about executing convicted murderers after years of appeals?) … For a defense of the hijackers by a relative, see this Miami Herald story. … Hope Yoko and Company have a nice meal at Fidel’s plantation! Don’t spoil dessert by mentioning any of this unpleasant business!

Mickey forgets the first rule: no act is too unspeakable, so long as the hand that performs it isn’t American, or friendly to America.

VIA OXBLOG, here’s a list of readings on reconstructing Iraq.

I JUST GOT AN EMAIL FROM ROD RODDENBERRY, who is afraid that my earlier post in which I said that “he hopes to interview some Klingons in Iraq (no, really) once things settle down,” might be misinterpreted as some sort of anti-Iraqi slur.

In the mythology of Star Trek, Klingons have been portrayed as animalistic and barbaric in behavior. Although placed a societal status equal to that of humans, the difference in ethnicity between Humanity and Klingons is often perceived as less evolved and thus inferior to Humans. The implication inaccurately suggests that I consider people from Iraq to be equivalent to Klingons.

I guess I was unclear. I just assumed that everyone would read that as referring to the Klingonophile variety of Trek fans, who dress as Klingons, speak Klingon, etc., but to be clear, that’s what he meant, not some slur on Iraqis.

I TOOK THE DAY OFF, but Jeff Jarvis has been blogging up a storm. Go read it.

THIS IS CNN:

Did you see any of this reported on CNN? Of course not. Because that would have endangered something the media prizes above everything else, including truth: access. In two decades the mainstream media has degenerated from impartial collectors and arbiters of what was news – in other words, reporters – to skulking curs, haunting the tables of potentates and movie stars and begging for scraps. No wonder they get kicked all the time.

Ouch.

REPORTS ON INDYMEDIA SAY THE STATUE-TOPPLING VIDEO WAS STAGED: Josh Chafetz goes to the photos and says the IndyMedia claims are bogus.

HERE’S MORE EVIDENCE FOR THE DEN BESTE THEORY that France, Russia and Germany tried to block war to conceal the extent of their support for Saddam:

Top secret documents obtained by The Telegraph in Baghdad show that Russia provided Saddam Hussein’s regime with wide-ranging assistance in the months leading up to the war, including intelligence on private conversations between Tony Blair and other Western leaders.

Moscow also provided Saddam with lists of assassins available for “hits” in the West and details of arms deals to neighbouring countries. The two countries also signed agreements to share intelligence, help each other to “obtain” visas for agents to go to other countries and to exchange information on the activities of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qa’eda leader.

The documents detailing the extent of the links between Russia and Saddam were obtained from the heavily bombed headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence service in Baghdad yesterday.

I wouldn’t take this to the bank just yet, but it’s consistent with other things that we’ve heard. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Then there’s France.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And there’s this:

Last week it was disclosed that two retired three-star generals — Vladislav Achalov (a former paratrooper and specialist in urban warfare) and Igor Maltsev (a specialist in air defense) — visited Baghdad recently and were awarded medals by Hussein. The awards were handed out by Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Khashim Akhmed.

It was reported that the retired generals helped Hussein prepare a war plan to defeat the Americans. Achalov confirmed he was in Baghdad just before the war and received medals from Hussein for services rendered. He also told journalists that the defense of Baghdad was well organized, U.S. tanks would be burned if they enter the city and U.S. infantry would be slaughtered. According to Achalov, the only way the allies could ever take Baghdad and other Iraqi cities was to raze them to the ground by carpet bombing.

I think we should be advertising that Saddam had Russian weapons and electronics (remember the GPS-jammers destroyed by GPS bombs?) and Russian military advice, too! We might even suggest, in a low-key sort of way, that those contributed to our swift victory.

Meanwhile, the article reports, the rapid US success is making Russians ask why their military hasn’t done better in Chechnya. Er, see the above paragraph. . . .

MOVING THE GOAL POSTS — a long, long way: Now the peace movement is worried about the impact of fast food on Iraqis.

THE LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT SHOOTING IS NOW OFFICIALLY TERRORISM. Uh, thanks for noticing, guys.

Here’s my column from last July. And here are some further reflections on homeland security.

I’M BACK: We had an idyllic picnic beside the lake at Cherokee Boulevard. The InstaDaughter made and packed a picnic dinner all by herself. It was very nice, the weather was perfect, and, well, it was the kind of day that I ought to have more of.

LIGHT BLOGGING: Various other responsibilities have been beckoning. Back later. In the meantime, you can read Dan Kennedy’s comments on CNN and Iraq. And Mike Campbell points to an interesting story on Iraq and UN inspection teams. And sheesh, of course I can take some time off, when even Moxie is warblogging. . . .

WELL, THE ANTIWAR CELEBRITIES AREN’T DOING MUCH, but Greg Beato lists some lefty groups that are actually raising money to help with Iraqi relief and reconstruction.

No action from Sean Penn on this front, though he may be otherwise occupied for a while.

(Here’s a blog that seems to be covering the Sean Penn affair steadily).

WHAT DID CNN KNOW, AND WHEN DID IT KNOW IT? The New Republic is asking.

I’ll have more up over at GlennReynolds.com shortly, too.

UPDATE: It’s up, now. Also, Rand Simberg is wondering why we should trust CNN’s reporting from Damascus or, well, lots of other places. And Tony Adragna wonders if it isn’t really a case of “Ritterism.” Ouch. But this suggested motto isn’t much kinder: “We had to suppress the news in order to cover it.” That kind of sums up how a lot of things have changed in 30 years, actually.

JIM GLASSMAN IS SAVAGING CNN over its Saddam suck-up.

MORE ON CNN: Reader Sage McLaughlin sends this, which echoes a lot of other email I’ve gotten:

You say that we really ought to give Jordan credit for his honesty at this point, now that the danger is passed. Maybe so. But that’s what he really, really wants you to do. That’s what he is, in fact, begging you to do, with a huge assist from the editorial staff of the NYT.

My opinion: Today’s piece was the most shamelessly transparent piece of corporate ass-covering I have ever seen in my life. The point of the article was to plead for understanding, to make the case that CNN had no choice, to hold the organization up as a heroic defender of the rights of its staffers, and to otherwise deflect what he knows is going to be widespread and damning criticism, now that the truth can no longer be concealed.

The really moral thing to do, obviously, would have been to pull out of Iraq years ago, instead of allowing Iraqis on CNN’s payroll to be tortured so that they could maintain the status symbol of “access” to the regime. This is nothing more than an attempt to preempt the likely damage to CNN’s reputation caused by the (accurate) perception that they have been complicit in Hussein’s enslavement of the Iraqi people since at least 1991.

And judging by the presumption of good faith you’re somehow able to lend him, it’s working beautifully.

You know, I think this is right.

TOMORROW NIGHT IS YURI’S NIGHT, celebrating Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering flight into outer space. Rand Simberg (scroll down a bit) has lots of information on how to celebrate, and where.

JOE BIDEN’S DUMB ANTI-RAVE BILL has passed both houses of Congress. Biden — and everyone else involved with this lousy piece of legislation — should be doubly ashamed: first for being associated with such a crappy bill, and second for sneaking it through without hearings and attaching it to an unrelated piece of feelgood legislation.

“FOR SUCH AN ADVANCED SPECIES, THEY SURE KNOW HOW TO RUB IT IN.” — Marge Simpson

Yeah, there has been a lot of pro-war gloating. And I guess that Dawn Olsen’s cautionary advice about gloating is appropriate. So maybe we shouldn’t rub in just how wrong, and morally corrupt the antiwar case was. Maybe we should rise above the temptation to point out that claims of a “quagmire” were wrong — again! — how efforts at moral equivalence were obscenely wrong — again! — how the antiwar folks are still, far too often, trying to move the goalposts rather than admit their error — again — and how an awful lot of the very same people who spoke lugubriously about “civilian casualties” now seem almost disappointed that there weren’t more — again — and how many people who spoke darkly about the Arab Street and citizens rising up against American “liberators” were proven wrong — again — as the liberators were seen as just that by the people they were liberating. And I suppose we shouldn’t stress so much that the antiwar folks were really just defending the interests of French oil companies and Russian arms-deal creditors. It’s probably a bad idea to keep rubbing that point in over and over again.

Nah.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald links this post in the — as usual — deluded notion that it proves his point. I’ve responded here.

MICKEY KAUS has more on the Eason Jordan Journalistic Enron, as well as a novel theory on why celebrities like to suck up to Castro.

EUGENE VOLOKH has a keen observation on vibrators and double standards.

NOW HERE’S AN ANTITERRORISM BILL I could really support.

MORE NAILS IN THE COFFIN OF ANTIWAR CREDIBILITY:

France, Germany, Russia, Belgium and Canada are not on the side of peace or morality or the Iraqi people. The pictures from the streets of Baghdad make that plain. But we are on the side of TotalFinaElf. Twice in recent columns, Diane Francis has mentioned, almost en passant, a curious little fact:

The Western oil company with the closest ties to the late Saddam is France’s TotalFinaElf. That’s not the curious fact, that’s just business as usual in the Fifth Republic. This is the curious fact: As Diane wrote in February and again last week, “Total’s biggest shareholder is Montreal’s Paul Desmarais, whose youngest son is married to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s daughter.”

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight: TotalFinaElf’s largest shareholder is a subsidiary of Montreal’s Power Corp, whose co-chief executive is Jean Chrétien’s son-in-law, Andre Desmarais. Mr. Desmarais’ brother, Paul Desmarais Jr., sits on the Total board.

For months, the anti-war crowd has insisted that “it’s all about oil,” that the only reason the Iraqi people were being “liberated” was so that the second biggest oil reserves in the world could be annexed in perpetuity by Dick Cheney and Halliburton and the rest of Bush’s Texas oilpatch gang. Instead, it turns out that, if it is all about oil, then the principal North American beneficiary of the continued enslavement of the Iraqi people is the family of the Canadian Prime Minister — that’s to say, his daughter, France Chrétien, and his grandchildren.

Perhaps the new Iraqi government will investigate Chirac, Chretien, and Putin for complicity in crimes against humanity? And I wonder if the folks who marched for “peace” will feel bad about being the tools of Big Oil? [ Yeah, but it's French Big Oil -- Ed. Well, it's okay then.]

IRAQIS DEMONSTRATING AT THE WHITE HOUSE: Orin Kerr reports:

As I came closer, I realized that it was a string of about twenty cars, mostly filled with Arab-looking men holding large flags. My initial thought: probably another antiwar protest. (The intersection of H and 16th Street has become a favorite spot for antiwar protesters in the last few weeks.) But as I walked towards the cars, I realized this was something very different: the flags the men were waving were U.S. flags, plus an occasional pre-1991 Iraqi flag, and the men were yelling things like “Saddam is gone!” and “No more tyranny!” Yes, they were loudly celebrating the downfall of Saddam Hussein , and had smiles on their faces a mile wide. It was a remarkable sight, and I was happy to stop by the side of the road and cheer them on for a few minutes.

Things will return to normal around the White House by tomorrow. International ANSWER is convening near the White House at noon to protest the war in Iraq; their website describes the war as a “horrific unprovoked attack on Iraq [that] must be understood as one of the extreme terrorist acts of modern times.” I guess somebody forgot to explain that to the Iraqis who were celebrating last night.

ANSWER — ever ready to add another rivet to the chains of tyranny!

THE ‘PEACE MOVEMENT’ didn’t get the oceans of civilian blood it wanted, and William Saletan notes that this poses a dilemma:

Some argued that war was always immoral; others argued that this war was hasty or unjust. All agreed that the immorality of war was based on the immorality of killing. Now that Baghdad has fallen, here’s my question to peaceniks: Are you against killing, or are you against war? Because what happened in Iraq suggests you may have to choose.

Every death is a tragedy, of course — except that to a lot of “peace” activists it seems that only deaths at American hands count. It’s entirely possible that fewer Iraqis have died in the last three weeks of war than in many previous three-week periods of Saddam’s reign. And now the killing by Saddam’s thugs is over for good. If we had had “peace” it would have continued indefinitely.

Of course, some have already chosen:

“The prison in question was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children – toddlers up to pre-adolescents – whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I’m not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I’m waging peace.”

And they dare call the U.S. military “baby killers?”

UPDATE: Daniel Drezner writes:

My suspicion is that most of the committed anti-war types loathe American power so much that they’ll choose to keep their hands clean.

I will beg to differ.

Me too.

FISKING HANS BLIX almost seems too easy. But shooting fish in a barrel has its pleasures.

CNN EASON JORDAN UPDATE: Several people have sent this link to a transcript of Jordan from back when Hussein was still in power:

BOB GARFIELD: I’m sure you have seen Franklin Foer’s article in The New Republic which charges that the Western press is appeasing the Iraqi regime in order to maintain its visas — to be there reporting should a war ultimately break out. What’s your take on that?

EASON JORDAN: The writer clearly doesn’t have a clear understanding of the realities on the ground because CNN has demonstrated again and again that it has a spine; that it’s prepared to be forthright; is forthright in its reporting.

Let’s hear more about those “realities on the ground.”

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the Foer piece. It’s pretty damning stuff even without the more recent admission.

That said, I think that Jordan deserves at least some credit for admitting the mistake now. The real question is, what will CNN do where other thugocracies are concerned? Is suck-up-for-access still the general approach, or have they learned something?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Is it a “journalistic Enron scandal?” Oh, no. I think it’s much bigger than that.

Matt Welch writes:

The embarrassing Peter Arnett interview on Iraq TV was just a brief public glimpse on what has been a nasty little private “secret” for years — that “news bureaus” in Baghdad and other totalitarian capitals (Havana, to name one) are actually propaganda huts, churning out what CNN producers call “sanctions coverage” (pieces on the awful humanitarian toll of international economic sanctions), while refusing to report the awful truth. It is possible, though intensely difficult, to do honest journalism in such circumstances. But with this column, I think we have the final proof that CNN will not be the news organization to rise to that challenge. Shame.

Shame, indeed.

ERIC ALTERMAN deserves credit for saying forthrightly what a lot of other people should be admitting:

I WAS WRONG

Paul Wolfowitz thought U.S. forces would be greeted as liberators in Iraq. I did not. His prediction in this case, was correct. I was wrong. (And not for the last time, I’m guessing.)

He strikes a somewhat less gracious tone in the rest of the post, but still, let’s give credit where credit is due.

On the radio (I think it was CBS radio news) I heard a correspondent from Mosul say that an Iraqi there asked him if America was there for freedom, or for the oil. What do you think? he asked. “If you stay,” responded the Iraqi, “you’re here for freedom. If you leave, it’s just for the oil.”

Interesting perspective.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan identifies more laudable candor.

HERE’S A REPORT on Knoxville band JagStar’s tour entertaining the troops in the ‘stans and the Gulf. Very interesting stuff. How many bands get to dine with Afghan generals — and then be de-wormed afterward?

CHIRAC AND SCHROEDER ON THE DEFENSIVE:

Chirac and Schroeder were both on the defensive today after television broadcasts showed jubilant Iraqi citizens welcoming U.S. soldiers and Marines to Baghdad.

Political opponents and media critics said the Iraqis’ reaction lent legitimacy to the war. They called on Chirac and Schroeder to put the war behind them and focus on repairing severely strained relations with the United States.

Meanwhile, in Washington today, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that France had “created a big problem” with such moves as holding up aid to Turkey from the NATO alliance, and that a reconsideration of NATO decision-making structures might be advisable.

“I think we need to look very carefully at where France is benefiting from a one-way street, where they benefit and don’t contribute,” Wolfowitz said. He accused France of failing to acknowledge the help that NATO was giving a European Union peacekeeping mission in Macedonia.

Paul Wolfowitz? Is he any relation to that Paul Wolifivitz guy the BBC keeps talking about?

WHAT THE NEWS MEDIA DIDN’T TELL YOU ABOUT SADDAM before the war, even though they knew it:

I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein’s regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

Maybe, you know, it’s not worth the moral compromises involved in reporting from a dictator’s capital, if you’re not able to tell the truth.

MICKEY KAUS’S GEARBOX FEATURE IS BACK, with observations on why front-wheel drive is like bad sex, and rear-wheel drive is like good sex.

“THE ALLIES GOT IT SO RIGHT,” writes John Keegan, “How did the pundits get it so wrong?”

Yet perfectly sensible people, who surely know better, clutter up their minds with such irrelevant factors as “the Arab street”, “international opinion”, the anti-war movement at home, votes in the UN and so on. They then predict that “American success is not certain”, “this could be a long and bitter war” and “the spectre of Vietnam looms over George W Bush”.

If they were employed by the City editor, or the sports desk, they would have been given their cards three wars ago.

Yes, but there are standards in sportswriting. I have some related comments over at GlennReynolds.com.

THE INSTAWIFE’S FILM PREMIERE went very well last night — there was an overflow crowd, the documentary looked good on the big screen, and everyone seemed quite pleased.

They also showed a trailer for Rod Roddenberry’s forthcoming documentary, Trek Nation,. (You can see a shorter trailer by following that link.) Rod is Gene’s son, and his film, which is being made with a Knoxville production company, is about the influence of Star Trek culture worldwide. He was there at the screening last night, and said that he hopes to interview some Klingons in Iraq (no, really) once things settle down.

UPDATE: A Knoxville production company? Well, yes. Knoxville is the fourth or fifth biggest center of cable-tv production in the country, with lots of stuff for Nickelodeon, Court TV, TNN, Discovery, etc. being done here. Roddenberry saw some MTV promos done by Atmosphere Pictures and then got in touch with them. As for Klingons in Iraq, Robin Goodfellow emails:

I don’t doubt there are klingons in Iraq, I remember several years ago being somewhat shocked while reading a usenet post in one of the star-trek newsgroups from someone in Rwanda explaining how television schedules were returning to normal after the refugees were returning and that meant he could
watch Star Trek: DS9 again. That was something of an eye opening for me of the depth and breadth of the global village.

Yep. And I sold a couple of Mobius Dick CDs to Iraqis back in 2000. I wonder who bought ‘em, and how they’re doing now?

OKAY, ONE MORE: Jim Bennett writes:

They once imagined that they had constructed a stronghold from which to defy America. Now that illusion is gone, blasted away along with Saddam’s bunker by some well-placed JDAMs. Their dreams of dominion and defiance shattered by the Anglo-American war effort, they now struggle to retrieve as much as possible of their old vision, and wonder how to rebuild among the ruins.

Not the Iraqis. The Europeanists.

Call it “the Dream Palace of the Europeans.” And read it all.

AZIZ POONAWALLA WRITES:

The images we all saw on television worldwide yesterday will be in our world history books as one of the defining moments of the 21st century. Alongside those of 9-11, yin and yang. I was and still am opposed to war on Iraq – not the idea of war per se, but like Howard Dean, by the route to which we justified and pursued war. But winning the war was never in doubt and my heart is is full of satisfaction at seeing the statues of Saddam fall at last.

I am however quite disappointed by the attitude of many who oppose the war – who seem to have a grudging attitude towards the liberation. IRAQ IS FREE. Regardless of your politics, your principles, your attitudes – this must be the shared event that we all celebrate.

I want to see Iraq a peaceful, free and prosperous place. It wasn’t going to be that any time soon without the war. Now it can be — but “can” isn’t the same as “will.”

What worries me is that there are still people — who when agitating for “peace” pretended to have the Iraqis’ interests at heart — who would like to see Iraq descend into the depths again just so they can blame Bush and vindicate themselves. And they’re not all in France.

MICKEY KAUS says that it’s bad to forecast light blogging, because it drives down traffic. I guess if I got, you know, paid for traffic I’d care about that. . . . (Just one dollar per pageview, that’s all I ask!)

But blogging will be light later, as I’m off to the local premier of my wife’s documentary film, Six. The trailer’s not up on the website yet, though there are a couple of news stories that excerpt the film on the site. Feel free to order a copy — it makes a perfect wedding, wake, or bar mitzvah present. [A "wake" present? --Ed. Why not?]

HOW MANY MESSAGES CAN YOU FIND IN THIS PICTURE?

(Via reader Richard Heddleson, who says he found it via a link in a comment at Buzzmachine).

SEAN PENN: Peace activist with a concealed weapon!

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER OBSERVES:

The sight of them panicked Cassandras here in the United States who were quick to predict that the evidence of any armed resistance meant that we were in for a long guerrilla war. But the Vietnam analogy was absurd. It was not the people of southern Iraq who harassed our troops on the drive to Baghdad but the regime’s shock troops. These “irregulars” were not insurgents; they were counterinsurgents. They did not represent the people they used as human shields; they ruthlessly repressed them.

Most of these enforcers were Sunnis from northern tribes, alien to the Shiite population they ruled. In the secret police prison in Basra, seven of the 16 officers were surnamed Tikriti, i.e., they came from Tikrit, Hussein’s hometown in Sunni north-central Iraq. They were not guerrillas, Mao’s “fish swimming in the sea of the people.” They were aliens who survived by torturing the locals and, when the British liberators arrived, by shooting civilians in the back. Rooting out these Baath thugs in the middle of a war was difficult, but as soon as the local population became convinced that the regime was finished, the thugs were finished too.

I predict that the Vietnam analogy will remain popular, though, with people nostalgic for a war where America lost.

A READER EMAILS:

Current spin, from Abu Dhabi TV: the Iraqis are jubilent not at the demise of Hussein’s regine, but at the end of the US-led UN sanctions which have caused many more deaths than Saddam ever did.

Well, that may be the spin, but it doesn’t explain the whole kicking-Saddam’s-statue-in-the-head bit, does it? And another reader has his doubts:

While I’m sure some Iraqis need food, most of ones I have seen on TV could use a little exercise. Looking at all the well-fed and the over-fed dancing in the street, it seems our embargo wasn’t working as well as “peace” prostesters claimed.

Yeah, it wasn’t a lean-and-hungry looking crowd. But, of course, if you buy the “sanctions were genocide” argument, then George W. Bush is a hero while Kofi Annan is a murderer.

Hey, I guess that explains all those pictures of Bush I saw Iraqis kissing yesterday.

UPDATE: I guess it explains why Iraqis were attacking and looting French and German cultural centers, too! They’re just glad those murderous Franco-German backed years of sanctions are over!

SPIDER ROBINSON, who I generally like, wrote an essay on the war that I thought was particularly dumb. I decided that it wasn’t worth Fisking, but Thomas James felt differently.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING SURVEY of responses to yesterday’s Saddam statue-toppling. Some people are distinctly unhappy.

EAMONN FITZGERALD REPORTS ON ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA IN GERMANY, which he says is reaching Goebbelsian levels.

THE RAVE ACT, which was rather sneakily inserted into unrelated legislation, is up for a vote in Congress today.

Joe Biden is behind this.

FEMALE WARRIORS: I hope we’ll see more items like this and this.

But I really hope that people in Arab countries will see them. Is Al Jazeera reporting that the Iraqis got their butts kicked, in part, by women? I can’t help but think that the psychological impact of that would be dramatic, and largely positive.

Slate, meanwhile, has a discussion on women in combat underway, while Phil Carter weighs in with some observations.

MAYBE NOT IN YOURS, but in my freakin’ name, anyway.

Meanwhile Janet Daley wonders when the left will apologize:

I have this delightful fantasy of left-wingers throughout the Western world putting their hands up and saying: “Well, actually we got that a little bit wrong.” And maybe even deciding that, since their analysis of the war was mistaken, their diagnosis of the peace might be open to question too.

But I’m not holding my breath. Those for whom America is always wrong will not be slowed down by this momentary setback. Rather like Mr al-Sahaf, they will not even appear to notice the tanks in the streets of their ideological neighbourhood. They will look away from the welcoming crowds of Basra (yes, they really did cheer, once it was safe to do so) and just move smartly on to the next American “crime against humanity”.

Yep. But not many people will listen to a crowd that has squandered its remaining moral and intellectual capital — again.

LILEKS:

Whatever you think we should do to get to that point, you have to admit that the sound of a cast-iron skull striking the pavement is a good way to start. And if you don’t it’s because you see some other false god on the podium, pointing at an empty heaven.

Men never seem taller than when they stand next to the prone remainders of a toppled tyrant. Someone someday will do a study of the statues the West pulled down. How they all showed a hard face to the dawn. How they all fell face first.

Amen.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON WRITES ON MAUREEN DOWD:

I confess that her writing has long bothered me, always in times of national duress reflecting an elite superficiality that is out of touch with most of us in the America she flies over. It is not just that for the last two years she has been wrong about Afghanistan, wrong about the efficacy of the war against terror, and wrong about Iraq — despite yesterday’s surprising sudden admission that “We were always going to win the war with Iraq.” The problem is more a grotesque chicness that quite amorally juxtaposes mention of tidbits like alpha males, Manhattan fashion — and her own psychodramas — with themes of real tragedies like the dying in the Middle East and war’s horror.

So she just doesn’t get it. It is precisely because Mr. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz hate war, wish to avoid a repeat of the vaporization of 3,000 in Manhattan and the specter of further mass killing from terrorists, armed with frightening weapons from rogue states like Iraq, that they resorted to force. She evokes Sherman (who called something like 19th century Dowdism “bottled piety”) with disdain, but forgets that Sherman, who saw firsthand the grotesqueness of Shiloh, proclaimed that war was all hell — but only after his trek through Georgia where he freed 40,000 slaves and destroyed the icons of the Confederacy, while losing 100 soldiers and killing not more than 600 young non-slave-holding Southerners, an hour’s carnage at Antietam or Gettysburg.

It might be neat between cappuccinos to write about leaders getting “giddy” about winning a terrible war, or thinking up cool nicknames like “Rummy,” “Wolfie,” and titles like “Dances with Wolfowitz,” but meanwhile out in the desert stink thousands of young Americans, a world away from the cynical Letterman world of Maureen Dowd, risk their lives to ensure that there are no more craters in her environs — and as a dividend give 26 million a shot at the freedom that she so breezily enjoys.

Yeah, but actually knowing history and stuff is too un-Carrie-Bradshaw-like for Dowd. My only complaint with Hanson’s piece is the Letterman reference.

Letterman — like many other comics including Jay Leno and Dennis Miller, and unlike Ms. Dowd who only tries to be funny — has actually been far more serious and perceptive about matters of war and peace than that reference would suggest.

I’LL BET THIS WON’T GO ON AL JAZEERA:

DEARBORN, Mich. (Reuters) – Iraqi-Americans celebrating Baghdad’s fall to U.S. troops on Wednesday protested the presence of reporters from al-Jazeera, accusing the Arab news channel of siding with Saddam Hussein’s deposed government.

Spontaneous celebrations in this Detroit suburb, which has one of the largest populations of Iraqi Shi’ite Muslims outside the Middle East, occurred all day, as people danced or paraded in the streets in noisy caravans of cars draped with flowers and Iraqi or American flags.

The festivities turned ugly late on Wednesday when scores of men, among a crowd of about 1,500 demonstrators in a Dearborn park, sighted an al-Jazeera correspondent and his cameraman and began hurling insults at them.

“Down, Down Jazeera,” the men shouted angrily, as police moved to surround correspondent Nezam Mahdawi, who had just flown in from Washington to cover Iraqi-American reaction . . .

“It’s a great message to send for all these hypocrite Arabic networks, especially al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi,” said Cassy Mahbouba, head of a group affiliated with the opposition Iraqi National Congress and a leader of the anti-Jazeera protest. Abu Dhabi is an Arab-language satellite station that competes with al-Jazeera.

“These networks talk about freedom and democracy but they don’t represent freedom and democracy,” Mahbouba said. “To the last moment they tried to support the dictatorship regime.”

Heh. I hope I’m wrong, and it does get coverage.

THIS WRAPUP OF INTELLIGENCE leading up to the war contains the following nugget:

The intelligence officials offered a tantalizing coda for conspiracy-mongers. They said the “crude forgery” received by U.N. weapons inspectors suggesting the Iraqis were trying to buy uranium from Niger as part of their nuclear program was originally put in intelligence channels by France. The officials wouldn’t speculate on French motives.

What, the French trying to discredit the United Nations weapons inspectors?

Now, why would they want to do that?

IS GROUP-BLOGGING THE FUTURE? Amish Tech Support wonders.

You know, InstaPundit was originally going to be a group blog, but I couldn’t get anyone interested at the time.

THERE’S A NEW TALKING POINTS MEMO FOR THE PEACE MOVEMENT:

Question: Do you feel foolish about predicting a quagmire?

Response: Well, there is still the occupation of Iraq, which will be difficult, not to mention the anger the rest of the world feels toward us. It will inspire countless acts of terrorism against the U.S.

Question: Do the cheering Iraqis make you think that what America did was a good thing?

Response: They won’t be cheering for long once they experience globalization. When U.S. multinational corporations move in to exploit them, when they realize that the U.S. will steal their oil, they will understand what this so-called “war of liberation” was really about.

(Whenever possible use an oil reference. Also bring in the globalization angle often. This will animate our rank-and-file (all 16%) and help us raise travel funds for the next WTO meeting. For example, see next question/response.)

Question: What about the children released from the Iraqi prison?

Response: A pure tragedy. Soon-to-be Nike sweatshop workers.

This is a parody, but — as seems so often the case here — reality has outstripped fiction already, as this email from Minneapolis reader Dan Israel demonstrates:

I heard these comments from anti-war protesters (yes, still protesting) on the TV and radio here in Minneapolis yesterday…I’m not making these up:

“This isn’t liberation. The reason the people in Baghdad are cheering the US troops is because they’re starving…of course they are cheering them, they’re hoping the troops will give them some food.”

“I think it’s disgusting when you see these images of our troops giving the Iraqi children candy. They need something nutritious, not just junk food from our troops.”

Honestly, I couldn’t make these up if I tried…

No, I’m sure you couldn’t.

BRAD DELONG WRITES:

Surely those who trusted Mr. Fisk, and who relied on his reporting to support their dismissal of the reports from CentCom in Qatar and of the embedded reporters with the 3rd Infantry Division deserve better than this. I mean, “Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia” is a catchy slogan, but is unsatisfactory as a matter of analysis. Surely Mr. Fisk’s loyal readers deserve an explanation of why it is that the world we live in is much closer to the world as reported by CentCom than the world as reported yesterday and before by Mr. Fisk…

Heh.

NELSON ASCHER explains Saddam’s secularism:

Saddam has been sometimes praised, mainly by the Old Europeans, obviously, for one virtue that at first seems to be beyond discussion, namely, his secularism in a region full of religious fanatics.

But I have finally discovered the ROOT CAUSE of Saddam’s secularism. Islam, like Judaism, has a taboo against the depiction of anything, human images included. By now you may be getting my point. How can one reconcile this puritanical taboo with the narcisism of a guy who wanted his own image, in pictures, statues etc., to be constantly shown everywhere in his country? No way.

Thus between pictures of Saddam, statues of Saddam, Saddam and more Saddam everywhere on one side, and Islam on the other, it was Islam that had to go. As simple as that.

Sounds compelling to me.

I GUESS THIS GUY must be one of those “neocons” that I keep hearing about:

“No, no, no,” yelled Shaaban Mohamad, watching television at a Cairo bookstore. “If the U.S. really wanted democracy, they would have taken out just about every Arab leader we have.”

Funny, he doesn’t look neoconish.

PHILIPPE DE CROY has reverse-engineered NPR’s playbook for war coverage. The results are revealing, and apply well beyond NPR.

HERE’S ONE OF THE MORE STAR-CROSSED AD CAMPAIGNS in recent times.

HERE’S AN EXCELLENT COLUMN BY ROGER PILON on the Texas sodomy case. Excerpt:

In a free society, before government can legitimately restrict the liberty of a citizen, it must have a good reason. The basic presumption, that is, is on the side of individual liberty, not government power. It is the government that must justify its action, not the citizen his liberty. And in that framework, not every rationale for government power will do. In fact, beyond protecting the rights of others, the rationales that will do concern primarily the protection of the general welfare – that is, the good of all.

Plainly, powers that punish those who are doing no harm fail that test immediately. If there is anything that marks the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, it is the right to pursue happiness, consistent with the rights of others, even when doing so may be unpopular or, in the eyes of many, immoral. That, in a nutshell, is the morality of liberty.

I agree, of course. (Via Keith Terranova).

UPDATE: Yeah, a non-war-related item. I’m hoping to trend steadily in that direction.

LOCAL TV NEWS IN KNOXVILLE showed a spontaneous street demonstration by area Iraqi-Americans, celebrating the fall of Saddam. Here’s a story from the News-Sentinel on a Knoxville man of Iraqi origins who’s very happy, too.

That seems to be the pattern everywhere: For Iraqi Exiles in California, Baghdad’s Fall is Instant Holiday; Local Iraqi-American Thrilled to See Saddam’s Regime Crumble; Iraqi-American Overjoyed by Fall of Regime, etc., etc. Just search “Iraqi-American” on Google News — new stories are appearing steadily.

So where was all the coverage of how unpopular Saddam was with these folks before the war?

UPDATE: Here’s a story about 1,000 Iraqi-Americans celebrating in Dearborn, Michigan. They marched against Saddam before the war, too, but were almost completely ignored by the Big Media.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jay Caruso has a link to video of the Dearborn celebrations.

INDEED:

This resembled the end of the Cold War because it was, in a different context, exactly the same thing. It’s the end of a vicious, oppressive dictatorship, that had clung on to power, with the help of the Soviet Union and France and China, well past its due date.

I think that Iraq’s “odious debts” should be cancelled.

AS PEOPLE TUT-TUT over the Marine who put the American flag up on Saddam’s statue, Malcolm Hutty observes:

The Iraqi crowd cheered when the US flag was raised. Rageh Omah, BBC reporter on the spot, couldn’t hear the sonorous commentry in the studio, and made the possibly career-limiting mistake of answering the question “How is the crowd reacting to the American flag?” with the simple truth. This answer has obviously not been repeated in evening bulletins.

Yes, I was thinking about that last night. I was also thinking that if it inspires feelings of impotence and fear in audiences around the world, that may be a good thing. We were told back in 1991 that a reason not to invade Baghdad was the potential Arab unhappiness at seeing “American tanks in the streets of an Arab capital.”

Given how things went in the intervening decade-plus in which American tanks were not seen in the streets of an Arab capital, I think it’s safe to call that concern misplaced.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis reports:

Cpl. Edward Chin, the man who brought down Saddam yesterday, is on the Today show right now. The flag he put up there was in the Pentagon when it was attacked on 9.11.

That puts a bit of a different spin on it, doesn’t it?

IN RESPONSE TO THE AGONIST’S PLAGIARISM SCANDAL, they’re talking about a blogging code of ethics.

How about: “Don’t lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do.” Er, and this: “Link to the source except in extraordinary cases.”

Er, and as Ken Layne says, “how hard is it to put things in quotes?”

UPDATE: Grashoppa observes: “I sure hope that as a grad student, Sean-Paul realizes that complaining about “time constraints” won’t fly with his thesis committee.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Meryl Yourish still isn’t satisfied.

BRITISH SAVE FEDAYEEN FROM ANGRY MOB: I suppose it was the right thing to do.

ASSIGNMENT DESK: All those Big Media types who’ll be crawling all over Baghdad looking for a fresh angle tomorrow (er, today, there) — start looking for Salam Pax. Everybody wonders where he is, how he’s doing, and what he thinks.

In the meantime, I’m posting this flag from his blog. I don’t think he’ll mind, and it’s a useful reminder of what this is about.

Jeff Jarvis agrees. It’s the big Baghdad story, guys — get on it!

IT’S A DAY OF MIRACLES: Ken Layne discovers worthwhile reportage from Robert Fisk, notwithstanding the ethnic slurs.

UPDATE: Incidentally, I just heard Ollie North on TV saying the same thing that Fisk does — that none of the Fedayeen paramilitaries are Iraqis, they’re all from other Arab countries. Well, if those two say it, I guess you can take it to the bank. . . .

I’VE GOT STEVEN BRILL’S NEW BOOK, but Homeland Security — or something, anyway — still looks like a joke. But Matt Welch isn’t intimidated by threats from The Man. Er, well, The Man’s wife, anyway. . . .

POET FREDERICK TURNER has written a poem inspired by the events in Baghdad. One doubts that Amiri Baraka would approve.

AIMEE DEEP’S BLOG seems to be emulating Maxim these days. Well, it’s a formula with proven appeal!

THE PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON BIOETHICS DOESN’T WANT YOU TO LIVE TOO LONG. Ron Bailey blames Leon Kass.

I blame Bush for appointing a guy who doesn’t want us to live long, healthy lives to head a council on bioethics. It’s like appointing Noam Chomsky as Secretary of Defense.

PHIL CARTER has lots of good stuff. Check it out.

I COULDN’T REMEMBER AT THE TIME (hence the term) but the “wag” mentioned in my GlennReynolds.com piece turns out to be Rand Simberg.

Well, he is a wag.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS:

We should celebrate our common ground as well as the gorgeous mosaic of our diversity. The next mass mobilization called by International ANSWER and the stop-the-war coalition is only a few days away. I already have my calendar ringed for the date. This time, I am really going to be there. It is not a time to keep silent. Let our voices be heard. All of this has been done in my name, and I feel like bearing witness.

Me too.

THE NEXT COMPLAINT: A prognostication.

NOT EVERYONE’S HAPPY — but some are catching on:

However, Tannous Basil, a 47-year-old cardiologist in Sidon, Lebanon, said Saddam’s regime was a “dictatorship and had to go.”

“I don’t like the idea of having the Americans here, but we asked for it,” he said. “Why don’t we see the Americans going to Finland, for example? They come here because our area is filled with dictatorships like Saddam’s.”

Tarek al-Absi, a Yemeni university professor, was hopeful Saddam’s end presaged more democracy in the region.

“This is a message for the Arab regimes, and could be the beginning of transformation in the Arab region,” al-Absi said. “Without the honest help of the Western nations, the reforms will not take place in these countries.”

These voices aren’t in the majority yet — but they’re not in the wilderness anymore, either.

UPDATE: Amir Taheri writes in The Times that we shouldn’t listen to the Arab elites:

The headlines screamed “Americans slaughter civilians” and “Thousands of Iraqis prepare for suicide missions”. None of that happened. The Iraqis proved to be wiser than some of their Arab brethren had assumed. . . .

The Iraqis did not wish to suffer the fate of the Palestinians, that is to say to die in large numbers for decades so that other Arabs, safe in their homes, would feel good about themselves. The Iraqis know that had the Palestinians not listened to their Arab brethren, they would have had a state in 1947, as decided by the United Nations Security Council. The Iraqis know that each time the Palestinians became heroic to please other Arabs they lost even more.

These days the Arab media are full of articles about how the Arabs feel humiliated by what has happened in Iraq, how they are frustrated, how they hate America for having liberated the people of Iraq from their oppressor, and how they hope that the Europeans, presumably led by Jacques Chirac, will ride to the rescue to preserve a little bit of Saddam’s legacy with the help of the United Nations.

Thank God, the peoples of Iraq, not deceived by Arab hyperbole, are ignoring such nonsense.

Are the “long-distance heroes” humiliated? If they are, so what? They should jump in a river. Today, Iraq is free and, despite its legitimate concerns about the future, cautiously happy.

Read the whole thing.

HEH:

Sen. John McCain said on FoxNews that if the French and Germans care about Iraq’s future, he suggests they forgive Iraq’s debts to them — especially since most of the debt was run up buying weapons.

I think we should make this argument repeatedly.

AUSTIN BAY has a new column up about Iraqi reconstruction.

I’ll have something on this subject up over at GlennReynolds.com shortly, too.

WELL, I FIND NOTHING TO ARGUE WITH in this post.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES: John Cole has a photo essay that’s worth your time.

ALGERIA MISSING TOURISTS UPDATE: My brother, who as I mentioned has actually driven across the Sahara, sends this link to a donations page for the search fund. He also sends this link and this one to discussion forums on the subject, and adds:

If you scroll down from the “donation” button there is not only news on the search for the missing folks, but also a link to pictures of the people and their vehicles. By and large they were well outfited and fairly experienced… not the sort to go missing in such numbers.

Emmanuelle Richard, meanwhile, sends this link to a Swiss story (in French, Google translation here). She also sends a bad link to another story, but the gist is that “a guide interviewed in the report said he was attacked by armed men and was spared after he brandished his Koran.”

Hmm. Stay tuned on this one, as I’m deeply suspicious about what’s going on in southern Algeria.

TIM BLAIR:

I SHOULDN’T be so happy. After all, I’m a right-wing deathbeast, and the end (or near end) of a war should upset me, because we conservatives lust for war all the time. Except when we have to fight it ourselves, of course. Being chickenhawks and all.

And the toppling of a fascist dictator should have me all weepy and nostalgic for Hitler. Because I’m a fascist, according to much of the mail I receive.

Those Iraqis dancing in the streets? That should really piss me off, because I want to oppress them and steal their oil. Why are they even able to dance? I was promised 500,000 murders, yet thus far only 1,000 or so innocents have died.

So why am I so damn happy? I really can’t explain.

I’d go and ask some oppression-hating anti-fascist peace activists about it, but for some reason they’re all incredibly depressed.

Yeah, go figure.

ARAB OPINION LEADERS ARE GOING THROUGH A ROUGH PATCH as images of the U.S. victory — and Iraqi hatred for Saddam Hussein, whom they had anointed an Arab hero earlier — are broadcast across the Arab world.

Will they learn the obvious lessons this time?

GREGG EASTERBROOK WRITES:

The new type of “bunker buster” bombs used in the strike are awful if you’re on the aim point, but also designed for use in urban environments: They are engineered to hammer the exact target but have little nearby effect. Look at those images of the rubble pit on CNN. Barely anything is left–we may never know who was in there–yet all nearby houses remain standing. That’s after 8,000 pounds of high explosives just went off. I wonder if French TV will report that we’ve gone out of our way to design a bomb that doesn’t kill the wrong person.

I don’t.

BASRA HAS A NEW MAYOR. He’s Iraqi. As Group Captain Mandrake says, Yes, we really meant it.

JEFF JARVIS is on a roll. Just go read.

DANIEL DREZNER WRITES ON ANTI-AMERICANISM in The New Republic. It’s an excellent piece about why anti-Americanism works better for election sloganeering than for governing, but what’s really cool is that he’s got links to sources over at his blog, and TNR links to them.

HEH:

from Prof. Robert P. George of Princeton: “‘”When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, and hear their death knell ringing; When friends rejoice both far and near, How can I keep from singing?’–19th century Quaker hymn revived by Pete Seeger in the 1960s (Haven’t heard Pete or other Leftists singing it lately. Wonder why?)”

Why, indeed?

UPDATE: Reader Mark Throneberry emails:

Enya recorded it not too long ago – and it’s a *marvelous* rendition!

It’s on her Shepherd Moons CD – as a matter of fact, it’s so good: just listen to the whole thing!

Listen to the whole thing, eh?

NEWS AND VIDEO from Ba’ath Party torture chambers, via Virginia Postrel.

JOE BIDEN RAVE ACT UPDATE: There’s information over at TalkLeft.

BRIAN MICKLETHWAIT WRITES:

Reporters have been struck by how few busted Iraqi tanks have contained any dead Iraqis, and I have already joined the small chorus asking about where the dead Iraqi bodies are to be seen in our newspapers and on our screens, because despite everything there have to have been some.

But things like these concrete bombs suggest another explanation for the general absence of dead Iraqi soldiers. It wasn’t just that the Iraqis were uniquely unwilling to fight for the uniquely nasty Saddamite regime. There was also the fact that, for the first time in the history of conventional warfare, “melting away” actually worked as a way to stay alive. Faced with an enemy willing and unprecedentedly able to smash all your big weapons, but willing to leave you alone if you just got the hell out of there, which the Iraqis were facing if I understand Coalition tactics correctly, they actually could run away.

If this is correct, then this is just one more reason among hundreds to admire all the thought that has gone into the Coalition attack and its tactics, throughout the last few weeks but also throughout the previous year and more. I hope that, when the story emerges, we will discover that the Coalition wasn’t just trying to avoid killing Iraqi civilians, but that they were also trying to avoid killing Iraqi soldiers more than was absolutely necessary to protect their own activities. Certainly the public pronouncements of Rumsfeld and co. suggest this. “Go home, abandon your weapons”, etc. Well, that’s what seems to have happened.

Interesting, and I hope the same thing. Of course, an absence of dead Iraqis would disappoint the bloody-shirt element of the peace movement, if not the Pentagon. But Marc Herold can probably supply dead bodies as needed, in any quantity requested. . . .

A.N.S.W.E.R. is planning a stop-the-war rally for Washington on Saturday.

They may get their wish, an end to the war. I wonder if they’ll be pleased?

UPDATE: Reader Rani Shea emails:

The networks are focusing, rightly, on the image of the statue falling. But when the news just shows live coverage without comment, I saw something remarkable. The scene is like a street party, with men and women and kids and soldiers milling about. In one shot, Iraqis are posing with American soldiers for photographs. One man, as his friend takes the picture, kisses the burly and armed American sitting next to him.

What a beautiful and unexpected moment. For the world, and probably for that soldier who is wondering how many more smooches he’s going to get from guys he doesn’t know.

Heh. I’ll let Andrew Sullivan weigh in on this one. . . .

BAGHDAD DOESN’T FALL: “It crumbles.”

The footage of Iraqis going after statues and pictures of Saddam is better than blogging at the moment. The TV guys are earning their keep. And it’s going out across the Arab world on Arab TV services, I understand.

UPDATE: Just saw a statue of Saddam go down, while Iraqis cheered and threw things. Best of all, it was via Abu Dhabi TV.

A lot of Arab rulers are nervous now.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Peter Jennings just slammed the BBC politely, noting that a BBC reporter described the liberation scene that Jennings was narrating as “utter anarchy.” It was, he said, an example of bringing a different perspective to the same events. Heh.

Meanwhile a British reader remarks that the BBC was slow even to cover the liberation events, and is now in an obvious snit, making a big deal about the looting even though it seems confined to Saddam’s palaces and the like. My favorite comment:

If the Iraqis want to help themselves to a bit of Saddam regime loot, or string up a few collabos, they’re welcome to it, so far as I’m concerned. I’ve never heard Brit broadcasters so aerated about economic redistribution before.

Heh. I think the BBC — along with a lot of other people — has shot itself in the foot over this one.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Scott Wrightson has some nice thoughts.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jim Hogue writes about the BBC’s reputation: “It crumbles.” He adds:

Quick note, while the statue was being pulled down in Baghdad my wife called and told me that the BBC was deeply engaged in a report on….an earthquake somewhere. Impartial indeed.

I suppose it depends on which BBC service you’re watching, as another reader sent me notes on a BBC report from the scene, but still. . .

Meanwhile Jim Treacher has already spotted the next protest sign.

And here’s a far more detailed critique of the BBC’s coverage, supporting the “it crumbles” thesis. And reader Dave Weigel emails about the looting:

Haven’t BBC reporters taken any sociology courses? What’s happening in Baghdad isn’t looting. It’s a popular uprising. Hey, that’s how one of my professors at Northwestern referred to the L.A. riots.

You mean you can have a “popular uprising” against a government that’s not Western, or at least Western-backed? Who knew?

Meanwhile reader Rick Richman emails: “Amazing turn of events: last year the guy got 100% of the vote!”

LAST UPDATE TO THIS POST: My brother emails: “Funny how it’s the finance ministry building in Baghdad that is on fire… those do seem to be particularly flammable when a regime is on the way out.” Yeah.

JAMES LILEKS WRITES:

Allied troops liberated a children’s jail today.

I wish that sentence made no sense.

Someone had to decide there would be children’s jails. Who? . . .

The end result of a fascist regime is always this: a man who seeks advancement by proposing a children’s jail; a smarter man who sees the political advantage of building one; the men who lock the doors and make the gruel with dead empty hearts, and the man who worries what will happen to him if the jail is found wanting.

The children, of course, don’t matter at all. In fact they matter least of all, and after a while their jailers come to hate them for what they make the jailers do.

A daisy chain of snakes biting their tales. Look up at the portrait hanging on the wall. Ask yourself what he wants. Bite harder.

Read it all.

THE WAR IS NOW OFFICIALLY A SUCCESS: “Hurt and Disillusioned, Some Arab Fighters Go Home “

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Salaam went to Iraq to do battle with Americans and die a martyr. He returned home with shrapnel wounds and tales of fighting U.S. military might with a rifle.

From a Baghdad hotel he moved to a training camp where volunteers practiced shooting and trench warfare. Then Salaam, 24 years old and unemployed, was sent to war.

“I was sleeping behind mounds of sand and firing from Kalashnikovs on helicopters. It was craziness,” he said.

“We stayed at the front five days and we didn’t eat anything. I saw two dead bodies shot in the head.”

Thousands of volunteers from across the Arab world are thought to be in Iraq to fight advancing U.S. and British forces. On Wednesday, jubilant Iraqis welcomed U.S. troops in Baghdad.

Salaam, a Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim, said he was unprepared for the hostility of some Iraqis to volunteers like himself.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have fully appreciated the situation. But here’s someone who does:

Hundreds of Muslim fighters, many of them non-Iraqis, were putting up a stronger fight for Baghdad than Iraq’s Republican Guard or the regular army, a top United States military officer said yesterday.

“They stand, they fight, sometimes they run when we engage them,” Brigadier-General John Kelly said.

“But often they run into our machine guns and we shoot them down like the morons they are.”

Think of it as evolution in action.

THE BBC / DE GENOVA CONNECTION: My TechCentralStation column is up.

DICK CHENEY I-TOLD-YOU-SO UPDATE:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Witnessing Saddam Hussein’s power stripped away, hundreds of Iraqis rushed to take everything else Wednesday: They used pickup trucks and wheelbarrows to haul off everything from refrigerators to flower pots from government ministries, police stations and state companies.

Emboldened by the sight of U.S. troops taking control of the capital, they not only dared to loot but also to celebrate Saddam’s fall, to vandalize his image and to call him a criminal — offenses that just days or weeks ago could have brought arrest, imprisonment, torture, even death at the hands of the secret police.

They also danced in the streets, waving rifles, palm fronds and flags, pumping their arms in the air and flashing the V-for-victory sign. . . .

On a Baghdad street, a white-haired man held up a poster of Saddam and beat it with his shoe. A younger man spat on the portrait, and several others launched kicks at the face of the Iraqi president.

“Come see, this is freedom. This is the criminal, this is the infidel,” he said. “This is the destiny of every traitor. He killed millions of us.”

Some people think the looting is bad, but I think that a certain amount is good. It reinforces in people’s minds that Saddam is gone, and that he was unpopular. Meanwhile, here’s what the antiwar crowd was defending:

“They did unthinkable things — electrocution, immersion in a bath of chemicals and ripping off people’s finger and toenails.”

The jail basement was a warren of cells, chambers and cages where the ground was strewn with an insect-eaten gas mask and bottles, according to Associated Press Television News footage. . . .

Outside the jail, a man showed APTN his mangled ears.

Hamed took British reporters into a yard behind the jail into a set of white boxy cells, surrounded by red wire mesh with a low, wire roof.

He said some of the cells, which had red doors with large bolts, were used to hold women and children. He also said hundreds of men were kept in a single cell about the size of a living room, which had one rusted grate window.

Between the men’s and women’s cells was a long mesh cage. Hamed said here, jailers pressed prisoners against the mesh and squeezed hot irons against their backs or threw scalding water on them in front of other inmates.

Fortunately for the Iraqi people, all those folks who just a few weeks ago were demonstrating in “solidarity” with them were quite properly ignored. And within minutes, they’ll have changed the subject to something else and will be acting as if they were never colossally, utterly, unredeemably wrong about this.

But they were, and a lot of people will remember.

UPDATE: Actually, I like this take on the looting:

(2003-04-09) — The looting in Baghdad stopped suddenly today as Iraq’s largest organized crime family disappeared from the city.

Thousands of Baghdad residents entered government buildings in an attempt to retrieve some small portion of what had been stolen from them for the past 24 years.

Heh.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reuters is reporting “Smiles and Flowers for U.S. Marines in Baghdad:”

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Hundreds of jubilant Iraqis mobbed a convoy of U.S. Marines on Wednesday, cheering, dancing and waving as American troops swept toward central Baghdad through slums and leafy suburbs from the east.

Crowds threw flowers at the Marines as they drove past the Martyrs’ Monument, just three km (two miles) east of the central Jumhuriya Bridge over the Tigris river.

Young and middle-aged men, many wearing soccer shirts of leading Western clubs like Manchester United, shouted “Hello, hello” as Marines advanced through the rundown sprawl of Saddam City and then more prosperous suburbs with villas and trim lawns.

“No more Saddam Hussein,” chanted one group, waving to troops as they passed. “We love you, we love you.”

Yeah, the thrill will pass, and soon they’ll be bitching about this and that, just like everyone else does. But I think that Cheney has been sufficiently vindicated. And some other people have been proven colossally, utterly, unredeemably wrong. Did I mention that?