Arnold Kling has a list of all the bad things that haven’t happened in Iraq.

After Chretien, it’s nice to see Canada finally have a PM with a grip on reality.

“I believe that terrorism will be, for our generation, what the Cold War was to generations that preceded us,” he said. “I don’t think we’re out of it yet.”

Martin disagreed with former prime minister Jean Chretien, who publicly blamed poverty for terrorism and the Sept. 11 attacks. “The cause of terrorism is not poverty, it is hatred.”

I know that good news about Iraq doesn’t seem to be very popular right now, particularly in the major media, but Glenn has a couple letters that are encouraging, about Najaf and Al-Sadr, and Fallujah.

On the other hand, what do they know?

They’re only the people who are actually there on the ground, interacting with the Iraqis in ways both violent and kind, as appropriate, every day. They don’t have the benefit of journalism degrees and elite cocktail parties from which to get their news and reinforce their anti-Bush opinions.

James Lileks says what I meant to say here, but more at length and, as always, more eloquently.

…half the battle will occur in places we cannot reach or observe. A minimal-casualty defeat of the Islamists will require the help of Islam. I’d like to think that will happen on its own, without some exterior catastrophe to force the issue. For that matter I’d like to think I’ll win the Powerball. Every time the jackpot goes over 200 million, I buy a ticket. Every time I lose. I’m always disappointed, of course. But never surprised.

Let’s hope we can hit the jackpot.

I’m not always a fan of Bill Safire’s, but I find little in this column with which to disagree.

But won’t the Iraqi people be driven crazy by pictures from Abu Ghraib prison and embrace the pro-Saddam terrorists? My Kurdish friends say that’s nonsense. They remember the 5,000 innocents Saddam gassed to death in Halabja