Boots Still On The Ground

I heard a rerun yesterday of Dennis Prager's interview with Karl Zinsmeister, author of Boots On The Ground, the story of the 82nd Airborne Division during the liberation of Iraq.

The good news? He's at work on a book about the aftermath.

Neither audio nor transcripts seem to be available for the interview, but it had some fascinating insights. Zinnmeister noted that in the Shi'ite south of Iraq, things seem to be going exceptionally well. The Kurdish north, he says, is doing even better - "the only part of Iraq I'd actually call downright attractive" is a pretty close quote.

Most impressively, says Zinsmeister, the Iraqi city councils are not only taking over the day to day operation of the cities from Baghdad to the provinces.

There's bad news: Fallujah, in the heart of the Sunni Triangle, is still dangerous, thanks to the fedayeen.

There's worse news: Many of your fellow citizens have proven Goebbels' maxim; the big lie has apparently been repeated enough for it to have taken hold.

Zinsmeister notes in an article in the Christian Science Monitor a comment by Iowa's ultraliberal senator Tom Harkin:

'This may not be Vietnam, but boy, it sure smells like it," said Sen. Tom Harkin recently. The Iowa Democrat is but one of a host of critics in Washington politics and the media who claim that US troops and administrators are "bogged down" in Iraq.

This is accepted as fact throughou the left-wing blogosphere (never with actual evidence presented, of course), and yesterday on E-Democracy's Saint Paul discussion list, a commentator referred to Iraq and Afghanistan as "fiascoes". The commentator was one (of the few) that would not ordinarily be considered a mindless moonbat.

The good news again: I doubt that anyone that believes this bilge would have voted for Bush this fall anyway.

Posted by Mitch at February 9, 2004 05:58 AM