PREDICTION: if the war in Iraq continues to go as well as it has in the coming days the antiwar Left, the Bush-is-Hitler crowd bloggers, Howell Raines, The Congressional Progressive caucus, the frustrated star pundits like Paul Krugman will become ever more hyperbolic, vicious, hateful and irrational as their months-long campaign for America's defeat comes to an inglorious but well-deserved end. This time around let's not graciously let the Lefties off of the hook when we start opening the Iraqi archives, torture chambers, presidential palaces and weapons labs and mass graves. Let's trace the money that flowed out of Iraqi coffers through third parties to organizations and perhaps individuals in the West and reveal Saddam's shills for what they were.

The defenders of freedom erred in 1991 when the Soviet archives briefly opened to reveal all sorts of folks in the West had been in the pay of the KGB but little was made of it, allowing the admirers of dictatorship to regroup by the late 1990's to defend Saddam, Milosevic and Kim Jong il and attack free trade agreements with a measure of political respectibility. Not this time.  ¶ 8:42 AM