"..there's no There There"

Mark Steyn is on fire! This is a must read that deals with the intellectual dishonesty in the media and the DNC camp. Here's a taste:

Sullivan's big idea is that the best way to force the Democrats to get serious about the war is to put them in charge of it. That's a helluva leap of faith -- and, in John Kerry's case, it's at odds with a 30-year track record of not being serious on the Cold War, Grenada, Central America, the first Gulf War, etc. As Dr. Laura would advise, you should never marry a man in hopes of reforming him.

In that respect, the Qaqaagate story is fascinating. What happened and when in Saddam's al-Qaqaa facility is somewhat murky. Had the shameless gang at "60 Minutes" had their way, the missing explosives story would have aired 36 hours before the polls opened, with no time for anybody to put the alternative to the Bush incompetence scenario -- i.e., that the stuff was moved to Syria before the war began. But never mind that. And never mind that the source for this story is a discredited U.N. official, Mohammed el-Baradei, on whose watch the IAEA not only missed entirely Libya's WMD program but has proved remarkably accommodating of Iran's.

Forget all that. The main problem with this story is that it makes no sense in terms of the Democrats' own narrative. For a year and a half, they've told us there were no WMD, Saddam wasn't a threat, and "BUSH LIED!!!!!!!!!" about it all. I happen to disagree with that, but there's no doubt that simply by hammering it home all day and night the Dems had some effect. Now they're saying whoa, let's back up, yes, as it happens, these non-existent weapons that Bush lied about the non-threatening Saddam having he did, in fact, have -- and that fool Bush let the non-existent weapons get away.

My version of this story -- they were smuggled out to Syria pre-invasion -- fits the Bush view of the war. But Kerry's version of this story undermines the Kerry view of the war -- or, at any rate, the most recent Kerry view of the war. That's the best clue as to the resolve he'd show as President: He has no internal conviction of his own, and so his campaign has run on incoherent reflex oppositionism, as, indeed, his Senate career has -- if America had followed the positions advocated by John Kerry, there would have been no Reagan arms build-up, and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact would have lingered on, and their clients in Grenada would have destabilized the rest of the Caribbean, and Latin America would not have been democratized, and Saddam Hussein would still be in power and still controlling Kuwait. Kerry's lovebirds at the Washington Post et al. are dreaming of a transformation in their unlovely swain that would be at odds not just with his last three decades but with his last three weeks.(/snip)

You must read the whoe thing, it is delicious!