And this note goes out to all of you here in the West who opposed the liberation of Iraq, a liberation now gleefully celebrated by the Iraqis themselves.

In a number of threads at the beginning of the recent war in Iraq, I challenged those who were forecasting tremendous amounts of gloom and doom in the current war to a gentleman's bet: if the Iraqi regime had fallen in five week's time, I won the bet. If not, they won, and I would freely admit so in this journal.

Well, guess who won? :-)

melonman, your time ran out on May first.

But GMontag may enjoy this one, so I'll link to it anyway... :-)

The thread that grew out of my response to this post are somewhat interesting, touching on the moral and international-law justifications for war in Iraq, and delving into some of the left's newer black-helicopter theories, especially those surrounding Hugo Chavez, Venezuala's tinpot strongman (who is a

As OpinionJournal points out this morning:

"Everyone is converging on the scenario of one side controlling the countryside and the other controlling the cities, until finally the cities start falling one by one. It sounds a lot like Vietnam to me, except that Saddam will not fare as well as Gerald Ford."

For some reason, the left seems to think that questioning the link between al Qaeda and Iraq is a good debate strategy. While the necessity of acting against Iraq in no way depends on such a linkage (an Iraqi nuke could as easily be smuggled by Iraqi intelligence as by al Qaeda), it's important to note that they're wrong on the merits on this one, too.

There once was a thug named Saddam
Who killed his own folks with aplomb
'til we spied on his meeting
and gave him a beating
with a stealth-dropped 2

"Q: Because there's one thing we need to make clear. When you say tomorrow is the moment of truth, does that mean tomorrow is the last day that the resolution can be voted up or down, and at the end of the day tomorrow, one way or another the diplomatic window has closed?

A fair percentage of the discussion attached to this story is interesting.

The nutjobs who think our democratically elected and constitutionally constrained system is more dangerous than islamofascist terrorism are out in full force, but I don't think they hold up their end very well.

The staff of The Federalist Digest have put together a petition, entitled In Our Name: A Statement of Justice , whose text reads as follows:

Well, we keep hearing that the US is in a `rush to war' in Iraq. In fact, we've been hearing that now for over six months, which sort of puts the lie to the whole idea:

"The Rush to War"
-- headline, The Nation, Aug. 7, 2002

So, we keep hearing that we need `a second UN resolution' if we are going to enforce the will of the UN and disarm Saddam Hussein, that we need `a second UN resolution' if we are to liberate the suffering people of Iraq. There's only one problem with this:

We already have a second resolution.

In this piece in The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes mentions the following (anti-)French jokes (some edited to match how I've heard them):

From Jay Leno: ``I don't know why we're surprised that the French won't help us get Saddam out of Iraq -- they didn't even help us get Germany out of France!''

Two gems:

``Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keep moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.''
-- Ronald Reagan

and:

``Congress is spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave.

On second thought, that's not fair...

So, as ncc74656 points out, a bunch of loony lefties calling themselves Not in Our Name have put together a petition against the liberation of Iraq (and by extension, in favor of Mr. Husseins rape, murder, and torture against the Iraqi populace).

As he also points out, it's well worth signing the counter-petition up here.