{"id":3053,"date":"2005-01-27T18:22:39","date_gmt":"2005-01-28T01:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2005\/01\/what-a-shock\/"},"modified":"2005-01-27T18:22:39","modified_gmt":"2005-01-28T01:22:39","slug":"what-a-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2005\/01\/27\/what-a-shock\/","title":{"rendered":"What a shock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tThe front page of my local paper looks like this today: <\/p>\n<p \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mossback.org\/pitchers\/deadly.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p \/>\nWhat does it mean?<\/p>\n<p>My guess is that with the election taking place in Iraq this Sunday, we&#8217;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&#8217;re desperate to make their mark. Zarqawi revealed &#8211; no surprise &#8211; that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2005\/WORLD\/meast\/01\/23\/iraq.main\/\">democracy is the enemy of his movement<\/a> and condemned all who participate in the election. He does this because he has no popular support to speak of.<\/p>\n<p>After the election Sunday the terrorists will have no ticket to the anti-imperialist, anti-occupation, anti-America sweepstakes, so it&#8217;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 &#8220;no thank you, terrorist nutbag dudes, we can handle it without you&#8221; then Zarqawi is out of business, and he knows it.<\/p>\n<p>So he may as well blow up all his bombs this week, because it&#8217;s all over but the shouting.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;ve been deprived of their moral suasion as well. Teddy Kennedy&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story&#038;u=\/afp\/20050127\/pl_afp\/usiraqtroopspolitics_050127215922\">troop withdrawl plan<\/a>? Maggie Gallagher&#8217;s conflict of interest? The South Beach Diet?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: Jeremy Brown has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaeltotten.com\/archives\/000715.html\">a much better version<\/a> of this story at Michael Totten&#8217;s site.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;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) &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2005\/01\/27\/what-a-shock\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;What a shock&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-Nf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}