"MEME" IS A PRETTIER WORD THAN "LIE". This guy, a Murdoch scrivener approved by a couple of blog-machers, drops an article gloating over about a dozen Aussie leftists who have been proved wrong in their Iraq casualty estimates.

So far so what, as most sane people on either side of the fence never doubted our caissons would roll over the Iraqi military. (The more interesting argument remains: how good is this sort of 'diplomacy by other means' in the long run for the U.S.?)

But it's all in the padding: the columnist in question lards his jest with statements like these:

So where are you today, you whom Saddam reckoned among his friends?
Where are you who waved anti-war banners that pouted: "Not In Our Name"?...

But when we say the Left got this war wrong, we must be clear that this was no innocent error of judgment. Too many wilfully let a self-indulgent loathing of capitalism, or the US or John Howard blind them to the real truths and the real evil.
NOR can we let the myth grow that the Left always knew the war would be won easily, and was worried more by the peace...

...they dreamed of a war in which millions died, and Iraqis greeted our soldiers not with kisses but bullets. Overseas, too, anti-war propagandists luridly dreamed of American honour drowning in Iraqi blood... How lovingly they linger on news of looting...

Aside from a couple of home-grown De Genovas among them, these guys appear just to have been wrong (albeit spectacularly so) about the conditions of the road to victory. To say that they are pro-Saddam, or dreaming of blood, on the basis of this evidence is rather a bridge too far.

But his fustian and frothing is not meant for them, but for the rest of us -- that is, anyone else who thinks our new Middle Eastern adventurism might not be the best use of our lives and lucre, however much was spent (or has been, so far). If you went to an anti-war rally, you're pals with Saddam. If you note with alarm the chaos in Baghdad, it is only because your dream of blood was interrupted by victory. And when the bill for this famous victory is presented, should you wonder aloud at the great cost and the small return, it will doubtless be motivated by your hatred of America and lust for carnage.

Saddam's two-minute hate is up -- yours is just beginning.

I TOLD YOU HE HAD STYLE. I really ought to read Bahrain's Gulf Daily News more often. They had a lovely story today called "Ex-banker 'helped Saddam hide cash in Satan's account'."

Some highlights:

A retired banker living in Switzerland spent 10 years helping Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hide millions of dollars via a bank account under the name of Satan, Britain's Sunday Times reported...

One of Saddam's relatives, Saad Al Mahdi, who controlled the "Satan" account with the Banca del Gottardo in the Bahamas, was beheaded by the Iraqi leader, possibly because he was skimming cash from the account, the report said, labelling him "something of a playboy"...

According to the paper, the former banker cannot remember details of his work for Saddam, whom he described as "a blood-thirsty, crazy man", having met him on several occasions.

That "having met him on several occasions" is the work of a true prose stylist. As for Saddam, he'll leave behind more anecdotes than Jerry Lee Lewis and Phil Spector put together.

PERMALINKS WORK, I THINK. Apparently I have to update the archive every time I post though. Drag.

FOUND TREASURES. I went looking for info about the new Christopher Guest film, "A Mighty Wind," and got an entirely different "A Mighty Wind." I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer to see their film. Solar energy, "Meteor judgement coming to Earth," and Messianic Judaism -- this could be the next "Left Behind."

JUNK FEAST. I'm mildly briefly happy. And why? Because fortune has placed Let's Do It Again on my telescreen. Yes, the even-lamer reprise to Uptown Saturday Night with Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier (who also lamely directed) and an all-black-star cast including Ossie Davis in a fez, J. J. "Dy-no-mite" Walker as a middleweight (!) boxer, John Amos as a kingpin, Calvin Lockhart (!!) as Biggie Smalls (see where they got it, kids?) and Denise Nicholas looking as be-a-utiful as she did on "Room 222" (and if she looks any different now I don't want to know about it). Goofy gags (some including hypnosis!), Poitier and Cosby in pimpwear (though Cosby is also fetching in his courderoy pork-pie hat), lots of ostentatious black supernumeraries (shouts to Louis Farrakhan!), and a reeeeal nice Curtis Mayfield soundtrack. It's a low-budget blessing, especially with Budweiser (though I expect Mickey's would do at least as well). Kudos to the African History Network for the viewing.

(On the "Room 222" tip, did you know Lloyd Haynes died of cancer in 1986? Pause in memoriam. The dude was a dude. I saw another 222er, Karen Valentine, in "Breaking Legs" off-Broadway some years back. She was fine, of course. (Larry Storch was in the same production!) And we all know about Michael Constantine's fat role in the fat Greek wedding. Ah, early 70s TV. Bliss it was to be alive.)

MY BUDDY. "The emerging US administration in Baghdad intends to use screened members of Saddam Hussein's municipal police force to keep order in the capital...another civil affairs officer, Major David Cooper, said: 'An awful lot of these people were police officers first and Ba'athists second. If we can identify those who were not hardline Ba'athists but are hardline Iraqi policemen, we can use them to maintain order.'" --Guardian.

Sergeant, this is Officer Mohammed. You'll be partnering with him on foot patrol

American pig, there is looter! Let us go cut out his tongue!

Ease up, Officer. He's only got a bag of groceries and a microwave.

I did not see the microwave. Is grand theft! I cut off his testicles as well!

(cue music and credits: Marcus and Mohammed -- teleplay by Bud Yorkin)

American pig, I have here prisoner. Come, let us interrogate him!

Officer, this man is dead!

What? Is impossible! I applied the electrodes for only one hour! He must have heart condition.

Ooooooh, you'll be the death of me, Officer Mohammed!

I see this one as more of a Desmond Wilson vehicle.

SHIT IN A CORNER II. Wow, they're still nuts over at the NRO blog. Fave line: "My new media analysis column suggests that many people labelled 'peace activists' would be properly labelled 'war activists.'" Fight the power, brother. And Lord bless us, Ned Flanders is back. Isn't Dallas a big enough market, or hasn't his local prayer group made him comfortable yet?

But the best is this record review:

Want to celebrate the liberation of Iraq? Like patriotic music? Interested in new independent artists? Then check out the superb new album by Eric Free... Free sings, "There's no God in old Bin Laden, Just the Devil grinnin' there...Bin Laden, America is comin' after you! You got no place to run or hide, Your killin' days are through!...Them crazy Taliban hate women, Treat 'em all like slaves. They bag 'em up from head to toe, Can't even show their face." Kim Il-Jong gets a bluegrass treatment... The title track "Saddam Insane" proclaims, "Saddam Insane, twisted brain, Gotta say g'bye to his evil reign! Sad Iraqis' house of pain, Saddam, Saddam, Saddam Insane!" Inspiring songs such as "United We Stand," "Flight 93," "American Heroes (At Ground Zero)," and "America Will Win" celebrate American freedom, valor, and determination...

Promising, but he's got nothin' on the Goldwaters.

METS UPDATE. Noo Yawk dropped one to the Expos tonight. Piazza stranded seven baserunners. Ty Whatshisname (Wigglesworth? Worthington?) hit well, but Cedeno's not batting his weight. Timo Perez caught a pitch on his hand. It didn't look good, and he got called for strike three, having come around with the bat while trying to avoid the ball. Shinjo made a nice leaping catch -- highlight of the Mets' game. It'll be a long season.

CORPORATE CITIZENS.The afterwar is an annoying subject, so how about a Den Beste-size post on the European Union? I notice that Hungary is in. Oddly, their referendum drew less than half the eligible voters. You don't expect that kind of apathy from the newly-freed. And some people believe that Poland's June EU vote will be similarly light.

The Polish prediction (great title for something, huh?) factors in a general "disarray" in Polish politics. But you don't have to be politically fragile, it seems, to have a weak EU turnout.

According to this 1999 BBC report, as the EU's power has grown, voter interest has actually declined:

The UK turnout - the lowest in the union at just 23.3% - also followed the pan-European downward trend since the last elections in 1994, when 36% of UK voters made it to the polling stations.

This year, all countries but Ireland have seen fewer people putting a cross on ballot slips.

"What people don't realise is they have failed to vote for people who have the power to change their lives," said Mr Brittan.

This EU voting roundup shows a few high vote-producing states (e.g. Luxembourg, Italy, and Greece, which all cracked 70 percent), but generally the major nations did not recruit many balloters. Germany, the UK, and France were under 50 percent compliance. The Dutch returned 29.9 percent. MEP (Member of European Parliament) voting played out to an average of 60 percent that year, but this would appear to represent a very wide range of national results. According to the EU's own research, "Although around 7 in 10 respondents said they intended to vote in the June 1999 elections, actual turnout rates were far lower, ranging from 24 percent in the UK to 90 percent in Belgium where voting is compulsory." [emphasis mine -- hey, how do you enforce compulsory voting, anyway?]

The Danes, bless them, had a record high turnout (87 percent) in 2000 -- in which they rejected the European Union.

According to this paper by Hilary Silver out of Brown University:

Nor are European Union institutions sufficiently democratic and responsive to popular opinion. Only half the Europeans surveyed by Eurobarometers support their country’s membership in the EU, and less than 45 percent feel satisfied with the way EU democracy works....

During times of rapid social change, citizens need reassurance that their sacrifices and risk-taking will be justified in the long run. That takes leadership. Given the weakness of the European Parliament, national elections serve as the main outlets for sentiments of malaise, mistrust or misery.

My quick gloss is that the more real the benefits of membership are to the citizens, the more likely they are to come out and vote. Slovenia, which could use some backup, got 60 percent out to approve the EU -- though that may have been inflated by the simultaneous referendum on NATO, which offers military support that voters in that troubled region might appreciate.

It may also suggest that the EU is, to many European citizens, a done deal. But that doesn't mean they expect anything of it. The Union is first and foremost an economic entity -- a way for the members to exponentiate their bargaining power in big, global deals. And as we have seen from our own globalization efforts hereabouts, that doesn't necessarily help the working folks -- not in any way we can feel (or spend), anyway.

In 2002 the Irish, having rejected in 2001 the eastward expansion of the EU to include 12 new members, were given a second chance to approve it by a nervous Irish government. It got over that time, but the turnout was under 50 percent. Seems like they responded, weakly, to badgering -- OK, OK, quit bugging me, I'll sign up.

Increasingly, here and abroad, we are becoming disengaged from our politics. The establishment of a new level of governance doesn't excite the Europeans any more than a new management structure would excite the workers in your average corporation. Maybe that's the new paradigm for what we are used to calling democracies -- corporate citizenship. The big boys propose the plan, and wait for it (or push for it) to gain momentum. We do vote, still, but with diminishing interest. Eventually, maybe, we'll just get the memo.

A LANDMARK DECISION. I just deleted a post. It wasn't all that bad -- a small shriek of outrage at Matt Welch -- but I hadn't thought it through and I wasn't happy with it. Rather than do reeks and wrecks on it, I threw it out. (The other post I put up while equally drunk ain't the best either, but it's close enough for blog 'n' roil and so it stands.)

After all, this isn't a diary. It's a priceless work of art.

KEEP ON ROCKIN' IN THE FREE WORLD. "Kurds Looting Sweeps Across Liberated Kirkuk" says the Washington Post. The Red Cross and others are asking the U.S. to do its duty by its newly liberated charges, the same paper reports. But to no avail. Hospitals in Iraq are crowded with the dying (dying? in our surgical strike? how did that happen?), with the lights out and the water run dry. From the Guardian:

The man had been dumped near the rubbish bins at the back, blood spreading across his chequered shirt. An orderly, who had been burying bloated corpses in a mass grave in the hospital grounds, recited the Muslim last rites. "Dead, dead, he's died, what can we do?" and returned to his shovel. But the man was breathing, in slow laborious gurgles, and his flesh was warm.

Forty-eight hours after Baghdad was liberated - as President George Bush would call it - by American forces, the city yesterday was in the throes of chaos. Men with Kalashnikovs dragged drivers from their cars at gunpoint, babies were killed by cluster bombs, and hospitals that had carried on right through the bombing were transformed into visions of hell.

But ignore that. Ignore the officially-unnumbered dead. Look at the fallen statue of Saddam! Read the propaganda that tells you how grateful you should be for this sweeping victory of freedom, bought with blood and billions. Learn to hate those that objected. Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive. Keep on rockin' in the free world.

CITY LIFE. According to Newsday, Governor Pataki is still against addressing our City's budget shortfalls with a commuter tax, but likes several alternatives, the most remunerative among these "tolls on East River bridges." If he has his druthers (and he will, friends, he will), out-of-towners who use our facilities every weekday will continue to pay bupkis toward their upkeep, while folks who drive from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back will be dunned a couple bucks a pop.

On the plus side, he also suggests a "50 percent surcharge on absentee landlord-owned apartment buildings," which will at least inspire a few sitcom pilots:

Listen, Achmed, if anyone asks, you're the landlord, get me? Look, I got papers made out and everything!

Oh, sir! To think that I, a humble rat-catcher, should rise to become the proprietor of such a fine slum! I shall not fail you, sir! As my first official act, I will install an intercom!

Look, smart guy, don't get any ideas! See this address? That's where you deposit the rent checks!

Oh my goodness, sir! This bank is in the Cayman Islands! Please tell me, what subway do I take to get there?

Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ooh, you'll be the death of me, Achmed of Bushwick! (cue music)

You think Danny DeVito's up for another sitcom?

FATHER OF LIES.“New Yorkers broke into cheers yesterday as they gathered in cold drizzle in Times Square to watch on live TV the end of Saddam’s reign of terror.”

The New York Post reporters (three of them on this story!) decline to give a crowd estimate. The accompanying photo shows images of Baghdad on the Jumbotron high over Times Square, and a couple of umbrellas. Four passers-by are quoted.

At this point, careful readers will tumble to the fact that the Post reporters were tasked with creating a “V-I Day” (or is it V-S?) story to make the world see how dizzy with liberation fever are the citizens of 9/11-ville. Unfortunately most of us were busy at, or looking for, work. So, instead of an iconic clinch, they gave us a picture of a big TV and the headline “Cheers of Victory in Times Square.” (Also unfortunately, the primary audience for the Post does not include too many careful readers.)

Meanwhile the hapless reporters’ boss, Rupert Murdoch, has gained control of Direct TV in the United States, making him, per The World Today, “the dominant player in Pay TV on the world stage.” So expect this sort of crack journalism to expand unabated into every home that is equipped with a telescreen.

IT'S A JOKE, ANDY. Andrew Sullivan, physiologically unable to produce humor, proves himself equally unable to recognize it. He carries a quote by Eric Alterman from the New York Observer, which said Alterman "was 'enormously gratified' by the reception to his book (good review in The Times), but added that he was also disappointed because the book had 'been crowded out by the war,' and thus it had been hard to get 'traction.' 'I had a lot of reasons to be anti-war, and the book was a small one,' he said."

Sullivan's gloss: "Did your jaw just break your coffee mug?"

I thought Brits were supposed to appreciate drollery, what?

HOW SPIN WORKS: A CONTINUING SERIES. "The White House warned North Korea, Iran and Syria on Wednesday to 'draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq' as the UN Security Council struggled to respond to Pyongyang's apparent revival of its nuclear weapons program." --International Herald Tribune.

"Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Az., said Wednesday that comments reportedly uttered by ex-President Bill Clinton falsely accusing President Bush of preparing to invade North Korea could be 'very damaging' to efforts to ease tensions between Washington, D.C. and Pyongyang... The Arizona Republican said he feared that Clinton's remark could prompt Kim to 'try to do something preemptively. And that would be very, very bad.'" -- NewsMax.

"You're gonna kick yourselves when I show you how he did this, it's so simple. 'Cause magic is all about...misdirection."--"The Amazing Maleeni," The X-Files.

UH-OH, #3,452. "Congressional Republicans, working with the Bush administration, are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping anti-terrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said Tuesday." -- San Francisco Chronicle.

ANDY'S GANG. I keep thinking of Al Pacino and Tony Roberts in Serpico -- "Ooh, anudder guy! We got anudder guy here!" On the heels of Andrew Sullivan's latest veiled traitor-baiting (see below), we get Donald Luskin at NRO: "The liberal punditocracy is about to face the sum of all fears: a world in which President Bush took the nation to war over all their objections, doubts, and second-guesses -- and won."

For those of you who need it more carefully explained: right-wing propagandists -- whether motivated by meme or marching order, I can't tell -- have started talking as if liberals had backed Saddam Hussein in the recent war (an even more slanderous extension of the "objectively pro-Saddam" slur). Luskin's particular take ("The left-leaning pundits must think of something — anything! — about which they can conclude: 'If that happens, we will have lost the war, whatever happens on the battlefield'") is particularly instructive. He takes the liberal suggestion that an ill-advised war may lead to unfortunate consequences for the United States, and willfully misreads it as an attempt to make the President look like a Big Loser. We're just saying that, in other words, to make him look bad.

When criticism is presumed to be nothing more than a tactic, it need not be addressed. See how it works?

The wingers will need this head of steam, as the jubilation of Baghdad may not long distract the American public from the horrible state of our own nation's economy. But it does make things easier when you can just call your opponent a traitor.

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN ANDYLAND. "Monsieur Mohammed Said Sahaf (why do I think of these Iraqi nutjobs as somehow French?)..." --Andrew Sullivan.

(Best Elaine Benes voice:) Well, that's because you're an idiot.

Elsewhere in Andyland, the proprietor sneers that Maureen Dowd "writes with astonishing glibness, 'We were always going to win the war with Iraq.' Oh, really? I don't remember her saying such a thing before." Similarly, her failure to note that E=Mc² proves she doesn't believe in the Theory of Relativity.

Or maybe he's saying that MoDo had her money on the Iraqi Republican Guard. That's the thing about Sullivan: you can never tell quite he's trying to say, but you can bet it's something stupid.

FOR THAT HE CREEPS. West Hollywood, CA, has made it illegal to declaw cats within its city limits. I must applaud this enlightened development. These magnificent critters were worshipped in ancient Egypt, yet in our own time they are subject to myriad humiliations -- none more disgusting than the preeminent cat character on TV, Salem in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, portrayed by some kind of animatronic puppet as a true Uncle Tomcat.



Their storied independence, their celebration by great English poets, and the way my Nelson and Bella forthrightly demand (never begging, as dogs would) their meals, and lazily admire every good thing that comes to them, such as the sunlight streaming through the living room window, as their due rather than as a gift, tesifies to the superiority of their spirit. It makes sense that they would win such a victory well before any community of dogs was liberated from, say, choke collars or ugly sweaters. At this rate, they'll achieve independence sooner than Guam.

"DON'T WORRY, GOVERNOR STEVENSON, THE THINKING PEOPLE OF THE COUNTRY ARE WITH YOU!" "YES, BUT I NEED A MAJORITY." The war is in its endgame, and already the war advocates are taking the opportunity to slander their opposition: You're all traitors, you love Saddam, no one likes you...

In case some of you youngsters who haven't been through this before are feeling a great sense of injustice right about now, let me tell you straight: you have every reason to feel that way. Nothing succeeds like success, and everyone wants to be on the winning team, even if they missed the first three quarters. Also, when faced with the choice between, on the one hand, believing that their Government would spend billions of dollars and dozens of American lives on a selfless mission of mercy, and, on the other hand, believing that their Government cynically overinflated a threat through lies and jingoism in order to take over a large, oil-rich country, the American people are going to make the choice that's easiest on themselves. I mean, when they have to travel a hundred yards to pick up a bottle of milk, they usually take a car -- how drawn to challenge do you think they are?

So, for a while, it'll be a little lonely for thinking people. As I spent more than a year demonstrating, nonsense is in fashion right now. You just won't be cool for some time.

Whether you can stick it depends on how devoted you are to being right. If you doubt your devotion, you might as well pick up your pennant and head off to the night rally right now. If your understanding of what it means to be an American doesn't absolutely force you to insist that two and two make four, then the historical observation that these things tend to run in cycles, and that our day will come, will not hold you to it. There's only one reason to choose what's right over what's wrong, and that's because it's right.