Another fascinating day. We truly do live in interesting times. Fascinating tidbit today. It turns out that there's a report that Germany helped us out with vital intelligence in the assault on Baghdad. Curiouser and curiouser. Think about the wheels within wheels there. Germany, who was pretty deeeply in bed with Saddam financially, and had a massive popular anti-war movement, actually helped us take out Saddam. All differences aside, what the Germans did saved lives. Danke schoen!

Saddam, by the way had to terminate his hunger strike "for health reasons". I kid you not. In his trial today, a document ordering the slaughter of 148 people and bearing Saddam's signature was entered into evidence. Whether by hunger strike, or by verdict, Saddam is going to die. He'll have what he denied so many, a fair trial, but he's going down and that is a good thing. I predict that when that happens, it will have a bigger impact than even the elections.

More "Sectarian" violence in Iraq. Was it really sectarian? Seems to me that Zarqawi is most likely behind this, as it is his stated objective to foment civil war. He may succeed. The Iraqi people have come a very long way in a very short time. In a very troubled place, it would nonetheless be a colossal tragedy to come this close to something better only to fall short. Maybe it is just not meant to be for there to be freedom and justice in that part of the world. Perhaps al Qaeda has its tentacles too tightly around the people's throats there. Maybe Islam is simply irreconcilable with modernity. Maybe these people just want to be miserable.

Whatever the case, and whatever the eventual outcome, I'm proud of my country. After being attacked in the vilest fashion, let the world remember that it was our impulse to help. We chose to liberate two countries and give them the most precious gift imaginable--freedom. If it should come to pass that the Iraqi's squander that gift, it's on them and not us.

Likewise with the Palestinian Authority. If it's war they want, I say give it to them.

I have long been an optimist, and a supporter of the President in the War on Terror. Tonight, even the strongest supporters can only sit by helplessly. If Iraq does descend into all-out civil war, there will be recriminations, and far-reaching consequences. The only winner will be al Qaeda.

At times like this, perhaps the only thing left is to pray.

About the Dubai ports controversy... Nice to see that the left is now fully engaged in the War on Terror. Welcome aboard, comrades. Just to bring you up to date, before you got interested, the right liberated about 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, has decimated the leadership of Al Qaeda, dismantled the nuclear network of A.Q. Khan, got Khaddafi to surrender his weapons of mass destruction, helped to throw the Syrians out of Lebanon, and, oh by the way, has kept the country safe from attack for almost five years. Little did we know that all we needed to bring you into the fold was the threat that the Teamsters might lose a few port jobs, but, hey, better late than never.

I listen to a lot of left-wing talk radio, or as they like to call it, "progressive". My general impression is that there seem to be just as many left-wing yahoos as right. The left in America may be a lot of things, but "progressive" does not seem to be one of them. They're against Social Security reform, against tax reform, against health care reform, and against a forward-looking sterategy for winning the GWOT, i.e., spreading freedom, and in general, against anything the Bush administration might propose.

If the administration really wanted a particular policy, right now the best thing they could propose would be the opposite. The left would immediately (and mindlessly) coalesce around opposing whatever the administration proposed, and they would get exactly what they wanted.

Which brings me back to the ports thing. Jimmy Carter supports it for God's sake! You know what it is? It's progressive! It's a policy of engaging with an entity in that God-forsaken part of the world that has actually been a friend to America. It seems to me that if a country is interested in investing billions of dollars in America, maybe they're not so eager to blow us up! I don't recall Bin Laden sinking tons of cash into New York real estate before blowing up the WTC.

So I wonder, my comrades of the left, have you really thought about where this is all leading? To me, your rhetoric sounds dangerously like "shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out". Which, actually, is probably music to the ears of the very most dangerous reactionaries of, you guessed it, the far-right wing.

Like I said, welcome aboard.

Caught my first dose of left wing talk radio this week. I have to admit I couldn't turn it off. Right-wingers can relax. We're in no danger of losing the intellectual high ground. It was all Dick Cheney all the time.

While I can understand the tendency to want to gloat when the other side F's up, it began to dawn on me that that's all they've got. There was a lot of grassy knoll-type conspiracy theorizing, as well as plenty of wild accusations, but at the end of the day, this was a simple hunting accident. Ultimately, it smacked of desperation. "Oh, please, can't this turn out to be something truly terrible? Die, Whittington, die!

The announcers all seem to have copied the annoying snarkiness of Rush Limbaugh without the intellectual firepower. Left-wingers all seem to think Rush is some great showman. He's not. Conservatives like me find him abrasive, and a poor spokesman for our cause much of the time. People listen to him because they agree with him, because he's locked onto certain core principles that resonate with many Americans--like an appreciation for free markets, a healthy skepticism of environmental fear-mongering, and an ability to poke holes in liberal hypocrisy.

Some of what I heard was truly offensive, some of it clever, but most of it vapid.

To use a poor football analogy, the right fumbled the ball, but the left went three and out.