And the beat goes on in Iraq

While there definitely seems to be improvement in Iraq, there have still been 44 U.S. casualties this month, more than in eight of the first eleven months since Bush declared "Mission Accomplished." And while U.S. deaths appear to be scaling back for the moment, the war itself continues to be as deadly as ever for the Iraqis themselves, with 2 more suicide car bombers this morning in Samarra and near Kirkuk. In the meanwhile, the much-vaunted freely elected Iraqi parliament has been unable to form a government and instead has been reduced to a shouting forum.

No doubt pro-war folks will respond to the above by, more or less, dittoing Paul Wolfowitz: "I have to infer from that (statement) that you would be happier if Saddam Hussein were still in power." To which a great post over on Night Light seems to me to say it all:

Let's deal with this question once and for all, OK? It's the classic retort given by neocons and other war supporters whenever anyone questions the wisdom of the Iraq War. In this case, it was Wolfowitz's response to a student who had just said the following: "We are tired, Secretary Wolfowitz, of being feared and hated by the world. We are tired of watching Americans and Iraqis die, and international institutions cry out in anger against us."

Let's say I get disturbed by a spider crawling up the garage wall. I slam the car into it at 50 miles an hour, destroying the car and causing a few thousand dollars in damage to the garage. When my wife objects, I say: "I have to infer from that statement that you would be happier if that spider were still crawling up the wall."

No, schmuck, she says, I'd be happier if we still had a car and didn't have to fork out ten thousand dollars to fix the garage.

And can anyone credibly claim that a non-WMD-armed Saddam was really anything other than a loathesome spider?