War is 'Over' (if you want it) - (do not read if you hate liberation)

So, peaceniks, I bet when you saw those pictures of utter jubilation in Baghdad, your heart sank didn’t it? Because, say what weasel words you like, those pictures alone utterly vindicated this liberation and completely rendered the sorry ‘Stop The War’ protests, an embarrassing failure.

This is the news: In Baghdad Iraqis cheered, threw flowers and kissed their liberators and thousands, virtually the whole city - not just a small part, we now know - went onto the streets and gave vent to their hatred for Saddam; defaced and burnt his pictures, toppled his statues. In Northern Iraq people even waved American flags and kissed pictures of Bush (so much for their supposed anti-US feelings). There is no doubting the ecstatic reaction of the Iraqi’s as they got their first taste of freedom, it was exquisite, absolutely exquisite.

And what of the ludicrous ‘rivers of blood’-esque bleatings of the anti-war movement we’ve had to put up with the past few months? Their hysterical rants - which put the The Daily Mail in the shade for going-to-hell-in-a-hand-cart worst-case-scenario alarmism - have ALL been proven to be complete and utter nonsense.
They said, again and again, that ‘tens of thousands’ of innocent people, mostly women and children, would die in the massive onslaught of bomb happy Americans.
It didn’t happen - DID IT? - the death toll for Iraqi’s is just over one thousand - and those are Iraqi [ex]government figures.
They said, again and again, the troops would get bogged down in months and months of fighting.
Try three weeks. THREE. WEEKS.
They said, again and again, thousands of coalition troops would be coming home in body-bags as a result of such fighting.
Try under 50 (most through friendly-fire. Natch).
They said, again and again, that Baghdad would be flattened without mercy by MOABs.
It didn’t happen - DID IT? - instead government buildings were hit with precision, gutting them, not destroying them.
They said, again and again, that there would be NO WELCOME from the people of Baghdad, that they would take up arms against the “invaders” (as Saddam and the ‘peaceniks’ - in cahoots as usual - called them) out of some sort of civic pride and Baghdad would turn into a Stalingrad-like bloody conflict.
It didn’t happen - DID IT? - what happened was the US troops drove into the city centre without a single shot fired, and were welcomed with jubilation.
They said, again and again, that “Saddam is a bad man buuuuut... actually it’s Dubya that’s the real villain. Saddam is bad buuuuuut... actually it’s actually all about oil actually, and everyone knows that actually. I read it in the Gaurarudian. Must be true”

Great scenes: Iraqi’s dragging the head of Saddam’s bronze statue thorough the streets, one person riding on it; a man standing in a street in central Baghdad, whacking the huge poster of Saddam he was holding with his shoe, shouting anti-Saddam invective; the looters making off with riches that were for decades denied them, including the kind of gaudy urns that Michael Jackson favours - but don’t call it looting, call it distribution of wealth. For now it’s fine, order will come in good time. Best of all: one of the first places in Baghdad that was targeted was a UN building - priceless! Genius! Was it coincidence? I doubt it, no fools the Iraqis, I think they knew exactly what they were doing. Brilliant stuff.
And news of protestors on the streets of London today as well - except these weren’t the middle-class dupes of the ‘Stop the War’ brigade, instead they were exiled Iraqis “taking” the Iraqi embassy as a protest against their [old] regime (no sign of any speccy students with placards though. Funny that).

Soon enough the doors to Saddam’s torture prisons and rape rooms will be thrown open, the weapons hidden under mosques dug out and the secrets of his immense brutality will be finally revealed. In fact it’s already started, ITN had a report last night with Iraqis, desperate to tell the world at last, leading the reporter around one prison - dungeon I’d call it - where they or their relatives had been tortured and kept, one telling the reporter he was locked in a miniscule cell for eight years because he - and I quote - “prayed too much” and was therefore seen as a subversive. Others acted out just how prisoners would be beaten and cruelly tortured during interrogation. Tip of the ice-burg stuff, I fear.
The pictures of those innocent people, children in particular, injured in the bombing (mainly thanks to Saddam’s habit of placing targets in civilian areas - and, by the by, anyone see that militia man using a child as his personal shield during one fire-fight? ) and the footage of Ali, the little boy who not only had lost his family but both his arms in a raid, was particularly heart-breaking. A horrendous tragedy. He is though, at the very very least, alive. He is being looked after, he will be flown to London and taken care of. He will survive. His story will be heard.
I just wonder if the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands not just injured in an accident but deliberately murdered during the Saddam years will have their stories heard? The children - not just men and women, children - imprisoned without trial, tortured to death in front of their families, women raped in front of their families, men being thrown alive into plastic-shredding machines, men and women and children hung up on meathooks in a ware(/slaughter)house and beaten, electrocuted and left to slowly die in agony... will GMTV or The Daily Mirror be telling their stories soon? Probably not, but hopefully someone will.

The ‘Stop The War’ movement - what’s left of it - has had the stench of failure for weeks and is now merely laughable. The support for it in Britain has utterly collapsed. A poll in the peaceniks precious Guardian at the start of the week had those still opposed to war at 29% (s’funny, the protestors were repeatedly bellowing that “virtually everyone in the country” is against the war just last month. Huh, and they say that Saddam’s Minister For Information came out with dubious statistics - he’s got nothing on these delusional dopes) I’m guessing that figure has dropped even further now.
That won’t deter the hardcore on the marches (the skivers and the under-tens that filled their ranks probably aren’t going to be bothered with it much more), they will grimace at pictures of liberation and attempt to carry on their meritless protest and their lost argument. They claim to have the moral high-ground and to be against war, but it comes apparently obvious when viewing the marches in various countries that the truth behind them is wholly different. Amongst other things I have seen with my own eyes in these mobs a variety of agendas: anti-Semitism, pro-Stalinism, pro-Saddamism and, at the very core of each and every march, at the heart of each and every protestor, the one thing that unites them all: a near-fanatical, hysterical anti-Americanism.
It has the leftist middle-class in Britain and the self-loathing anglophile American in a vice-like grip to such an extent that they are now even giving tacit support to the genocidal maniac Saddam Hussein and his tyrannical fascist regime. Nothing, it seems, can make them come to their senses. Not even, perhaps, a joyful liberation of an oppressed people.
This is a massive failure of the left in the west, who, as a result of having no moral compass, have become an irrelevance. Shame.

Very, very difficult days ahead, yes. But, what is now beyond argument is:
If it was up to the protestors Saddam would still be in power right now and for a long, long time to come. There was NO OTHER WAY to topple his regime, the protestors have certainly failed to come up with any viable alternative, except to ask for endless, pointless resolutions and endless, pointless 'inspections'. The peaceniks were wrong and have been proved wrong. Iraq is without Saddam Hussein.
Less than three weeks after this ‘war’ started I’d say: that’ll do.