The front page of my local paper looks like this today:
What does it mean?
My guess is that with the election taking place in Iraq this Sunday, we’re down to the last few days of relevance for the Iraqi terrorists (and their buddies from Iran, Syria, and the rest of the Al Qaeda states) so they’re desperate to make their mark. Zarqawi revealed – no surprise – that democracy is the enemy of his movement and condemned all who participate in the election. He does this because he has no popular support to speak of.
After the election Sunday the terrorists will have no ticket to the anti-imperialist, anti-occupation, anti-America sweepstakes, so it’s down to condemning democracy, and by implication, the very people that Zarqawi and his boys want to rule. If the people of Iraq say “no thank you, terrorist nutbag dudes, we can handle it without you” then Zarqawi is out of business, and he knows it.
So he may as well blow up all his bombs this week, because it’s all over but the shouting.
Now that brings us to the question of what sort of emptiness the Bush-hating papers like the Oregonian will lead with next week, after they’ve been deprived of their moral suasion as well. Teddy Kennedy’s troop withdrawl plan? Maggie Gallagher’s conflict of interest? The South Beach Diet?
UPDATE: Jeremy Brown has a much better version of this story at Michael Totten’s site.