Useful... - I took a

Useful... - I took a surf through the left branch of the Blogosphere to get an idea how the left is taking the bad news of Hussein's capture.

The Daily Kos - the wonkiest site on the net - is phuffing and phumphering:

Capturing Saddam is good news (although not as exciting or important as would be news of capturing the guy Bob Graham called "Osama Bin Forgotten"). But capturing him alive might not have been the best news for the Bush administration. There are many questions to be answered over the next hours, days and months, and it's not clear that anyone has the answers.

Look for Bin Laden's health to suddenly become Cause #1 among the Dems.

Kos kontinues:

And what about the continued attacks on American troops? It's hard to imagine Saddam was exerting much operational leadership over the attackers from inside a "spider hole" in which he barely had room to move around. The people attacking coalition troops don't appear to need Saddam around to tell them what to do, and their actions don't appear to be necessarily directed at restoring Baathist control over Iraq as much as evicting the occupying forces from their country.

Note to Mr. Kos; read some history, especially that of Josip Broz Tito or General Giap. Get back to us when you have some historical perspective.

"Atrios Eschaton" (again, what is it with the foofy, pretentious names for leftyblogs?) says:

But, it really doesn't change much. Capturing Saddam isn't going to end the resistance to the US occupation in Iraq. It may improve things slightly, or it could even make it worse, but the net effect will probably be negligible.

Mr. Eschaton: I'm going to bookmark your remarks. We're going to review it in Christmas of 2004 - very, very publicly.

Saddam was a bad guy, but it isn't clear he's any worse of a guy than some of the folks who are a part of our "Coalition of the Willing," so this pretense of moral clarity, etc... is ridiculous.

Mr. Eschaton - or may I call you "Atrios"? - name one country in the Coalition (no scare quotes needed, silly man) where mass graves are being dug up daily.

Any time now.

Saddam wasn't a threat to us.

If the Atta link pans out - and it may - then you'll be right, if only in the sense that a threat that has already been carried out is called "History of Terrorism". Since your site (and your movement) is all about technicalities these days...

He closes:

And, cynical me just has to ask - who's the enemy now? The base needs one.

Cynical? I'd hold out for ignorant and moronic. (All you friends of Atrios can quote me on that).

Ollie Willis - who is frequently less an idiot than many leftbloggers:

MORE: Fox News, of course, is working themselves into a lather. I just want to say - man, Bill Clinton's army ain't too shabby, eh?

The remains of Ronald Reagan's Military are doing just fine, despite Bill Clinton's best efforts.

"Hesiod" - a leftblogger that I've called "Moonbat" before, and no doubt will again - was the first left-blogger I'v seen actually try to explain why Hussein's capture might be a Bad Thing for the US (although many have said it would be):

But...now that the object of their fears has been neutralized, if the insurgents continue on their same path (and conditions in Iraq do not radically improve), they may begin to develop an aura of legitimacy among many Iraqis.

They will not be perecived as fighting to return Saddam, but to attain Iraqi independence.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how this could be a major problem for us.

Fair enough.

But it does take one to figure out how the non-Sunni 80% of the Iraqi people - the ones that have largely not been shooting at us or the allis - would figure any benefit from another round of Sunni/Tikriti-led "Independence".

He continues:

Obviously, we all hope and pray that this breaks the back of the resistance.

But, it may well be that it does the opposite. And building up the hopes and expectations of the Iraqi people...only to create bitter dissapointment if things do not start going much more smoothly...is a recipe for disaster.

Here'd be some recipes for disaster:

• Follow the current Democrat mantra, and turn the admnistration over to the UN. Let them suck up to the former Ba'athists enough to scare the bejeebers out of the rest of the nation. Foment a civil war.
• Follow Howard Dean's chimeric and idiotic notion of bringing in hundreds of thousands of Moslem troops, complete with all the inter-sect rivalries endemic among people of that faith; it'd be like sending an army of Southern Baptists and Mormons to Northern Ireland.

More as coverage warrants.

Actually - no. No more. I can't stand it any more. Most of these people are digging so hard to try to spin this as no big deal, it's nauseating.

Posted by Mitch at December 14, 2003 10:12 AM