Post-Zarqawi Spin

Remember how President Bush was relentlessly pilloried after the end of major combat operations in Iraq because we hadn't gotten Saddam Hussein? And then we captured the cheetos-scarfing, mass-murdering old bastard, and the Left pirhouetted and said that didn't matter because we haven't gotten Osama bin Laden and "Emir" Zarqawi? And now we've gotten Zarqawi, and the Bushophobes are - or shortly will be - somersaulting again and saying that is irrelevant because we still haven't gotten bin Laden, and besides, blowing him into Koranic cutlets will just breed ten more just like him, like these ostensible public enemies #1 are a dime a dozen?

Rush Limbaugh had some thoughts on that:

You've gotta give this time. They're not that dumb, but they can't help themselves. They'll have enough discipline to hold their fire on what they really think of all this for a day, but just be patient out there. It won't be long. They'll start asking the questions, "Was anything tortured?" When they learn that there was a detainee role played in this, when they learn that detainees offered intelligence - meaning prisoners, wherever we're holding them - you mark my words, "Were they tortured in any way?" I mean, some of the other things, folks, that you can expect to hear from assorted liberals over the course of the remainder of the week:

"Did we have to use violence? Couldn't we have tried diplomacy? Couldn't have we talked to Zarqawi?"..."What was the urgency? Couldn't we have offered a few carrots? We could have talked to him. Why did we have to do so quickly? Now the world is going to hate us! The world is going to hate us even more! Bush is destroying our image in the world. Now we're killing people and putting them on TV like we're happy about it! Haven't we learned that violence begets violence? I mean, if we had been mature, if we had been mature enough to leave and cut and run, then that man, Zarqawi, would be alive today, would be alive today, perhaps on the verge of rehabilitation - and, I'll tell you what we've done. All we've done with this - this is not a victory. This does not advance our cause. All we've done is create more terrorists. They're going to flock from the world over!"

You know what they're going to say, and then some of them are thinking, "We would have gotten Zarqawi a year sooner if Kerry were president," or "If we listened to Biden, or if Democrats were in power, Zarqawi would have never been in Iraq," blah, blah, blah, blah. You're going to hear themes, variations on all these themes in due course.

It didn't even take twenty-four hours for Dem officeholders to start frantically trying to catch up with their demented base:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is warning Americans not to get too excited over the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, saying in a statement issued by her office Thursday that it really won't do much to improve the situation in Iraq.

After briefly noting that she was "proud of our troops for their tireless work," the top House Democrat wasted no time in throwing cold water on the good news.

"[Zarqawi's] death does not alter the fact that our brave men and women in uniform are fighting a war of choice in which the President sent our troops into harm's way without a plan for victory and without leveling with the American people," she complained.

Even for a ditzy old hag like Crazy Nancy this is weak. Essentially the same as jamming her fingers in her ears and humming at the top of her lungs. "Zarqawi's dead. Did you hear me, Madame Minority Leader, ZARQAWI's DEAD!!" "Can't hear you! Can't hear you! Nyah nyah nyah [insert standard anti-war boilerplate doggerell of past three years on continuous loop].

She even made the argument for staying in Iraq in the process of calling yet again for the Coalition to cut & run:

"Several hours after Zarqawi's death, nineteen Iraqis were killed and forty were wounded in a roadside bombing in Baghdad," the San Francisco Democrat noted. "These deaths are a stark reminder of the ongoing violence facing our brave men and women in uniform."

The brave men and women in uniform on whom she wants to force a cowardly retreat, stupidly throwing away the victory they won in the GWOT today. Mr. French and Congressman Haw-Haw at least spun it as, "We got Zarqawi, let's declare victory."

But these are just the preliminaries. Limbaugh's reference to the "torture" angle is, I think, most prescient, since it will lead back to the Left's preferred Abu Ghraib/Haditha propaganda. Something to be expected from a party whose members take bribes from Castro and which holds up crazed lunatics as "models."

They really can't help themselves, can they? Now if only we can refrain from bailing them out....