Kelley Does SWNID's Work While Stars Align

Columnist Jack Kelley of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Toledo Blade, two delightful newspapers of the rust belt, has done what SWNID has lacked the time to do for several days, namely, respond to the much balleyhooed speech of John Murtha and the reports of a gun battle in which Abu Musab al Zarqawi, chief bad guy in Iraq, was at first reported killed. We note the following important developments on this contrasting story lines:

• It appears that al Zarqawi is being ratted out by former supporters. The tactics of terror, turned on other Arabs, are not effective.
• Meanwhile, Murtha's call for "immediate redeployment" was presented in so partisan and incoherent an manner that it could only be taken as a call for retreat and a sign of surrender, at just the moment when the insurgency is on its heels.
• The media puffed Murtha's speech as coming from a hawk, when in fact Murtha has opposed the Iraq War from the beginning.
• The Democrats, lately stirring up its Angry Left base for fundraising purposes, was caught offguard by the roll call vote on immediate withdrawal, something for which they would pay dearly if more than three of their number were to vote in favor.

However, it's worth noting that when Murtha's incoherent rant is sorted out, he was actually articulating what is likely to be the position of American forces in the next twelve months. Fred Kaplan, who makes Murtha a hero, notes that he is merely articulating a means of taking the next logical step in the handing over of Iraq to its new government while shepherding American resources. Most of these things have been leaked from the Pentagon long before Murtha stepped in front of the C-SPAN cameras last week.

And so political leaders in Iraq are calling for a "timetable" of American withdrawal. So the stars are aligning; the future seems clearer.

But the opposition party needs to suggest that all this means a failure of the Bush administration. Funny, though: it looks like the continued pursuit of the original goals for the invasion.