Steyn: 9/11 Didn't Change Porkmeisters, But Iraq is Cool

Mark Steyn's Sunday Chicago Sun-Times column is consistently a consummate perspective on the week's major event. Today he trenchantly notes that 9/11 didn't, as advertised, change everything. Local officials were flatfooted.

Incidentally, he also gives the lie to the notion that the Bush administration took money from Big Easy flood control for the Iraq war, mentioning in passing that the government built a bridge to an uninhabited Alaskan island for more than three times the amount by which New Orleans flood control was reduced.

Then take a look at his Spectator piece justifying optimism about Iraq. With SWNID, Steyn insists that the constitutional process is going just fine, thank you. And then he fires this devastating volley:

If the Shia are England and the Kurds are Scotland, the Sunni Triangle is Northern Ireland. Oh, and the Marsh Arabs are Wales. . . . The point is that back when bombs were going off in Belfast and Derry, life was relatively pleasant in the rest of the United Kingdom except for the occasional sudden atrocity. . . . I often say the glass in Iraq is two-thirds full, but that’s not quite right: it’s seven-ninths full. In 14 out of 18 provinces, life is as good as it’s ever been.