But I wonder, gb, what mighty thing, what glorious triumph, we've achieved in Iraq.

We freed twenty million people from a tyrant, and from a dynasty that looked like it would have made Saddam's regime seem mild by comparison. Is this nothing?

I am flabbergasted that this fact is routinely shunted aside, usually with some comment along the lines that they may end up with a lousy government anyway, or that the twenty million are of no consequence, since several thousand died in the war, or that since the only reason ever given for the war was uranium from Niger, the whole thing is immoral.

It is bizarre to hear this kind of thing from the Left (and I'm not talking about you at this point), which when I was young, gloried in "liberation movements," and supported every half-assed army that claimed to be fighting oppression and tyranny, as long as that half-assed army was communist. "The ends don't justify the means," some leftist jackass will say, ignoring the hundred million murdered in the history of his own movement. "To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs" is how the old Left referred to that particular toll.

The Left in this country doesn't give a rat's ass about the people of Iraq--any more than the people of Cuba--save as a weapon to use against Bush and the right. They have invested their entire credibility and hopes for future power on failure in Iraq (and Afghanistan), and if it does not fail, they are in serious trouble. This includes, IMO, the Democratic Party leadership.