[Pokey78]

FINALLY!

I've been having severe Steyn withdrawls!

[MEG33]

I needed a dose of Mark Steyn!

[D. Brian Carter]

"How much for a fill-up?" I asked.

"Ten dollars," the man said.

"I've only got a 20," I said.

"That's good," he said. "Bush," he added, pointing to the picture of Andrew Jackson on the bill.

"Close enough," I said. Afterwards, he wanted another 20 for his seven-year-old boy. I'm a softie but not that soft, so I fished out a Canadian 20.

"What this?" he said suspiciously. "American one dollar?" He pointed to the Queen's portrait. "Who this?"

"George Washington," I said.

He'll have a hard job getting rid of the Canadian but that Yankee 20 he'll change in one of the stores back in town and he'll do himself and the local economy more good than the UN's bloated boondoggle ever will.

LITERALLY LOL! Great post, BTW.

[Dark Wing]

ping

[LibertarianLiz]

A Steyn bump.

[gcruse]

Whew. I was afraid Mark and gone to Shi'ite and the hogs ate him!

[arjay]

Excellent post. Isn't it amazing how many people there are in the NGOs who have absolutely no common sense? Steyn reveals their stupidity in an extremely compelling manner.

[xm177e2]

Hand-to-hand street-fighting as Baghdad morphs into Stalingrad? Dream on.

Steyn should not trivialize this. This was Saddam's best hope to inflict casualties on our forces. With a few experienced Palestinian terrorists to advise his forces, he could have made a huge mess for us in Baghdad. Instead, he chose Russian advisers and decided to engage America in conventional warfare. We won easily because Saddam is a kook. We also won easily because we put a tremendous amount of unconventional efforts into convincing Baghdad's defenders not to fight us. It didn't have to be so easy. I think the success in Baghdad is the most stunning victory of the whole war, not a foregone conclusion.

[Mr. Mojo]

If [food] prices really are "too high", it's because storekeepers are in the first flush of a liberated economy. Given that the main drag in Rutbah has a gazillion corner shops lined up side by side, competition will soon bring prices down to what the market can bear, if it hasn't already. Offering folks WFP rations will only put some of those storekeepers out of business and ensure that even more people need rations. But perhaps that's the idea.

Indeed, that is precisely the idea.

Socialism.

[McGavin999]

This was great. We need more articles like this one. I wonder why enterprising journalists don't go out into Iraq and get the real information. Why don't we hear more about life in Iraq now?

I wan't someone to do something on the Marsh Arabs now that the water is beginning to flow back into the marshlands.

[Mr. Mojo]

But, given that the new Iraqi government is never going to be as huge as the old one, maybe that chap should just stop whining to the BBC and look for a gig in the private sector. Ditto for the BBC reporter, come to that.

LOL

[Mr. Mojo]

These days, I always laugh my head off at BBC World reports. And, in that Ramadi cafe, I was touched to find that, even though most of them hadn't a clue what he was going on about, within half a minute, the rest of the crowd was roaring along with me.

What a fantastic image!

[Imal]

The blubbery bleach of BBC babble will never remove the Steyn of Truth!

[Ichneumon]

Come to think of it, I was wearing a suit and tie (the Robert Fisk look isn't really my bag)

ROFL!

[UnklGene]

He's baaaaaacck!

[Tall_Texan]

Is he an Emmy-award-winning journalist from an internationally renouned television network? No, but he did stay at a Ramadi Inn last night...

[UnklGene]

The "Sunday Telee" had Mark kinda hidden. I must've found him just minutes after you.

[baseballmom]

I managed to determine that the Oxfam crowd was holding a meeting with the Red Cross to discuss the deteriorating situation. But just what exactly was "deteriorating"? As my groaning table and the stores along Main Street testified, there was plenty of food in town...

I'm so glad Steyn went to Iraq to see for himself what the heck is going on.

Well, well, well. We should have known. If there is no disaster, these guys are out of a job. They'll just have to manufacture a crisis. SOP.

[prairiebreeze]

The inability of their Arab brothers to resist screwing over the Palestinians is not a problem George W Bush can fix, only King Abdullah,

Being Palestinian herself, I'm shocked that the King's beautiful wife thinks this is appropriate treatment for her countrymen. (sarc) Or perhaps all she is ultimately interested in is spewing anti-Israeli, anti-American hatred.

Prairie

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

God bless this man. Thank you for the post. Thank you for the common sense, Mr. Steyn.

Great Expectations | Iraqis embrace freedom--even though it starts off messy.
Opinion Journal - Wall Street Journal ^ | May 30, 2003 | ROBERT L. POLLOCK