Blogging from Hell

by digby

No, I’m not in Las Vegas. I was actually hoping to be the official “not at Yearly Kos” liberal blogger. (Think of me as that one member of the cabinet who doesn’t attend the State of The Union in case somebody bombs the Capitol.) I figured there needed to be at least one of us out here who is not hungover, busy being feted by the Democratic party poohbahs or making time with some previously unknown blog-hottie and so would have the time to do serious blogging about serious things while everyone else was having too much fun to document the ongoing atrocities. Alas, I began to suspect last night that all the coolest bloggers in the world gathered in Vegas and conspired with BlogSpot to make me entirely irrelevant.

Unless, of course, I have managed to finally foil their dastardly plan and can blog throughout the week-end from my undisclosed location. I promise to give it my all, Blogger willing.

So, what’s been happening? Anything?

I heard that Zarqawi is dead. Again. Awesome. I’m hoping they lay out his corpse like they did Uday and Qusay because that goes over so well in Muslim culture. They love it when the infidel messes around with dead bodies and displays them publicly.

I shed no tears for the bastard, of course. But he’s just a convenient symbol the Bush administration glommed onto to “Al Qaeda-ize” Iraq. In fact, they had ample opportunities to take him out before the war started, but they declined for political reasons. (I wouldn’t even be surprised if there were actual deals made — these guys are nothing if not savvy marketers.)

And heck, if it weren’t for the fact that the war is actually a homegrown insurgency and civil war, taking out a satellite al Qaeda cell leader might make a difference. Unfortunately, the war the Bush likes to think he’s fighting and the one those poor schmucks over there actually are fighting are very different things. You don’t have to be a military expert to know that even if Zarqawi were the mastermind the administration portrayed him as, the war is a lot more complicated than the cheap Chuck Norris movie the Bushies have tried to market to the masses. (Think “Syriana.”)

So, the beat goes on. Bush is still incredibly unpopular, especially about the war. Which is a really good reason for Democrats to steer clear of criticizing him for it. It simply wouldn’t be sporting of them to take political advantage of the fact that Bush and his Republican lackeys in congress insisted that we invade a country for no good reason. The Marquess of Queensbury would give them all a damned good thrashing for even thinking such a thing.

More on that in the next post.

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