Amir Tehari reviews the bidding two years after the toppling of Saddam’s brutal regime.

The most ardent advocates of the anti-war case are remnants of the supposedly revolutionary left that, in almost every other case, regard the law as nothing but a bourgeois prop to keep the masses in check. The spectacle of Leninists, Trotskyistes and Maoists beating their chests about the legality of toppling a tyrant is surely a treat for all students of politics.

Indeed.

At least by Saddam.

It’s the seventeenth anniversary of Halabja.

If some had had their way, the monster who did this would still be in power. Instead, the Iraqi people just had their first free election in decades, and peace and democracy is on the march throughout the region.

The TSA continues to drag its feet in letting airline pilots arm themselves.

Strategy Page says that the “insurgents” are running out of money.

Lileks says that the Middle East is a lot like the Sopranos.

[Update at 10 AM EST]

GaijinBiker says that freedom is sexy.

A lot of nostalgic lefty anti-war types have been warning us for years that Iraq was going to be just like Vietnam. Claudia Rossett says that they may be right. But they won’t be as happy about it as they think they will.

It kind of reminds me of an old joke that a USC grad told me, back when their football program was in the doldrums in the eighties. He said that his nightly prayer had been that USC would have a basketball program as good as its football program. And he finally got his wish.

Heh.

The Iraqis seem to be fed up with the “insurgents”, his “Minute Men.”

More than 2,000 people held the impromptu demonstration on front of the clinic, chanting “No to terrorism!” and “No to Baathism and Wahhabism!”

The pro-Syrian Lebanese government has fallen. Just goes to show you what can happen when the vaunted “Arab Street” really gets stirred up.

A while back, I recall seeing a poll, or survey, indicating that the vast majority of Iraqis had an acquaintance or family member who had been tortured, imprisoned or killed by the Saddam regime. But I can’t find hide nor hair of it on Google. Am I going nuts (well, that’s probably a separate issue), or can someone point me to a cite?

Once again, it is employed by the increasingly odious Professor Cole (who makes me embarrassed to be a Michigan alumnus), and slapped down by the Baseball Crank.