[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

After a couple of weeks away, I return to spend a lonely evening talking to myself at the eerily deserted Armchair Warmongers Club (Fleet Street Branch). Where'd everybody go?... Anatole Kaletsky ~~ sunk in his own columnar quagmire: "Iraq will indeed now replace Vietnam as the byword for America's military humiliation, its strategic incompetence, its wayward moral compass," etc, etc. His Times colleague Mary Ann Sieghart has flounced off, too: "That's it! I've had enough. I'm fed up with justifying the war in Iraq to sceptical friends, family and acquaintances."... Tony Parsons, hitherto the token non-anti-American at the Daily Mirror, feels cheap and used. "Tony Blair fooled me," he says bitterly. "I see now it was all a pack of lies." With moulting hawks all around squawking their forlorn chorus of "I'm No Longer Such An Ugly Duckling", it's tempting to join the mass ecdysis. But this is one leopard who won't be changing his spots.

Steyn, as always, is a paragon of Wit and Erudition...

One of the reasons I keep this delightful Neo-Conservative word-smith par excellence on my personal "Must Read" list, alongside such Paleo-Conservative curmudgeons as Joe Sobran and Pat Buchanan, and Libertarian hell-raisers like P.J. O'Rourke and Fred Reed.

But while Steyn is apparently attempting to channel Rudyard Kipling with his declaration "this is one leopard who won't be changing his spots", he's sounding more like Alfred Lord Tennyson: "I return to spend a lonely evening talking to myself at the eerily deserted Armchair Warmongers Club (Fleet Street Branch) -- Where'd everybody go?"

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
No!! Though the soldier knew...
Some one had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

The Light Brigade was (of course) Noble, Patriotic, and Heroic.

They were also (of course) slaughtered to a man by the merciless Russian artillery. "Was there a man dismayed? No!! Though the soldier knew...Some one had blundered."

George W. Bush has fallen ten points in Approval Ratings since the Abu Ghraib prison photos came out. He will of course still win Texas, the West, and the South, but he is now losing to John F-ing Kerry in almost every single one of the "Purple States", the competitive States (mainly along the Ohio-Mississippi River Valley) which make the Electoral difference between Defeat and Victory in a divided Blue-Red Nation.

“Forward, the GOP Brigade!”
Was there a Neo-Con dismayed?
No!! Though the Realist knew...
Rumsfeld had blundered.

[xzins]

Latest poll returns Ohio to the Bush column.

Since I live here and am a native, I know the conservatism in the suburbs and rural areas. The inner cities will kill him unless he works some magic, but the conservative areas NORMALLY carry Ohio in presidential elections.

Ohio and Florida are the keys.

Go to Dales page to see. http://home.comcast.net/~gerrydal/

[xzins]

BTW, you are correct, OP.

Steyn is one of my favorites.....a list that's dwindling in number. George Will went soft politically and downright mystical in his sentence structure. Cal Thomas is busy being nice enough to stay on Fox News. Bill Safire is like a car with a crudded over catalytic converter.....you never know when he's gonna backfire, but mostly he just stays with traffic.

Coulter....Annie has my vote, too. She wears the pants right now in the American Journalistic family. She's more man than all the rest of the gang combined.

[tet68]

Washington will realise all the extra troops they needed are sitting around twiddling their thumbs in Europe, guarding against enemies who no longer exist on behalf of allies who are no longer allies.

Seems Rumsfield had realized this and has already started
pulling troops out of south Korea.

Steyn Bump!
What a wordsmith!

[WOSG]

"George W. Bush has fallen ten points in Approval Ratings since the Abu Ghraib prison photos came out. "

The New York Times ran 30 straight DAYS OF FRONT PAGE NEWS on it.

And then they tell us in the fine print, most of those pics were taken on a single day, nov 8, 2003.
BFD!!!

Bush has fallen because the media was able to create a temporary panic and scandal out of practically nothing. So what.

Snap out of it! Folks, that's the Steyn message. The war is just, the war is being won.

The Iraq war has gone spectacularly well. we made more mistakes in a single D-Day *training excercise in WWII than in the whole Iraq war!