Tim Blair

MIRANDA DEVINE on the neo-pacs:

MIRANDA DEVINE on the neo-pacs:

When they could no longer deny that the coalition had the upper hand, the neo-pacs changed tack. Suddenly they didn't want to talk about the war any more. Or if they did it was only to lament how "one-sided" it had been, or to demand to see the weapons of mass destruction, the "smoking gun" that proves al-Sahaf and his regime pals really are liars.

As always, the neo-pacs have a fallback position on WMDs. Any found in Iraq will have been planted there by the Americans. The neo-pacs rolled out a dazzling array of diversionary tactics to avoid talking about the coalition advances. My favourite was the "Western hypocrisy" inherent in the toppling of Saddam statues all over Iraq. "What right does the coalition have to destroy a symbol of Iraq's history," Stephen Hanlon of Brighton, Victoria, wrote to The Australian, comparing the toppling of Saddam statues to the Taliban's destruction of the ancient Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan.