On April 12th 2003, after the fall of Baghdad, I wrote a column in The Daily Telegraph discussing the latest predictions of doom and making my own observations on how things would look a year ahead. Well, that time is almost up, so here’s how it stands. I wasn’t 100% right, but the naysayers were close to 100% wrong. The original column and predictions appear in black. The updated assessment of the situation is in red:

Read it here – IRAQ: ONE YEAR ON. None of Steyn’s observations will come as any surprise. But it’s fun watching him rub it in.
What is perplexing is the behavior of those who were wrong a year ago, who continue to predict doomsday and failure, unwilling or unable to learn from experience. It’s almost perverse. If you want a good idea of what is likely to happen in the coming months, listen carefully to these people, and then presume the opposite. Not a bad system, actually.

BBC commissioned poll in Iraq The poll suggests that Iraqis are happier than they were before the invasion, optimistic about the future and opposed to violence. It suggests that the reporting of the daily attacks on the occupying forces in Iraq could be obscuring another picture. Seventy percent said that things were going well or quite well in their lives, while only 29% felt things were bad. And 56% said that things were better now than they were before the war. Almost half (49%) believed the invasion of Iraq by the US-led coalition was right, although 41% felt that the invasion “humiliated Iraq”. More than three quarters (79%) want Iraq to remain united, and only 20% want it to become an Islamic state.

CTV/Globe and Mail/Ipsos Reid poll of Canadians Prime Minster Paul Martin … reiterated his support of Canada’s decision not to send troops to Iraq, a view shared by 74 per cent of Canadians in a new CTV/Globe and Mail/Ipsos Reid poll. 63 per cent of Canadians believe the United States made a mistake in going to war in Iraq.That’s a dramatic jump of 16 points since December. Other findings of the poll: 67 per cent agree that U.S. President George Bush knowingly lied to the world in order to justify his war with Iraq. 61 percent agree “true democracy will never come to the region,” despite all the U.S. efforts. 69 per cent�agree that because of what has happened, the U.S. “will learn a valuable lesson” that it is better for them to work with countries around the world rather than to act on their own in issues of world crisis. 54 per cent disagree that because of what happened on Sept. 11 2001, the U.S. is justified in any action it takes to protect itself from future terrorist attacks.

What do the Iraqis know that Canadians don’t?
The truth?
The Canadian poll was blasting all over the airwaves today. A representative from Ipsos-Reid was interviewed on local talk radio – and it was most enlightening. In discussing the poll results there was no qualification offered for the belief that “Bush lied”, as in pointing out that no one has any evidence that this is true. He offered that the poll results indicated that Chretien had chosen the correct position regarding Iraq – as though popular opinion should guide national security policy.
Very revealing. I wonder how the questions were worded. Check the second last paragraph, for example – the learned a valuable lesson result.

A followup to my comments on the allegedly beleagured shock jock:
Dead Man Talking, And Talking, And Talking – Reid Stot has a lengthy post on the history of Howard Stern, wolf crier…

But if you want the short tame proof this is nothing new, consider this quote: “Howard Stern is Dead Man Talking. Remember where you heard it first.” And where and when did we hear it first? From Michael Harris, in Ottawa, Tuesday, November 18, 1997.

“Live by the tit, die by the tit”.
Wish I’d come up with that.
Via Instapundit:

Is it just me, or is Howard Stern turning into a whiny tit?

Howard came back after the break and said he has some bad news. He said that the future of radio is coming to what he thought it would. He said he’s wanted to be on radio since he was 5 and knew that he would change the way people talk on radio. He said it was his stupid destiny. He said he finally got on the radio and got on in Philadelphia and Los Angeles and he’s even changed the way people talk on TV. He said that his tim has passed though and he’s become too much of a symbol in this country that is out of control to the religious right. He said they’ve been organizing for the past 15 years or so trying to get him off the air. He said that they’ve been targeting his advertisers and trying to censor him. He said he has made the big mistake of getting political.

He’s made a career for himself as a risk taker, and now he wants a risk free environment.
I actually like Stern well enough to listen to him when travelling in the US. But give it a rest, Howard. When you push the envelope, sometimes, the envelope pushes back.
If you were broadcasting in a country in which there were no rules or regulations, in which there were no possibility of enforcing decency norms, you’d be busting your ass in a real job. Without the envelope, there can be no “Howard Stern”.
Stern could always move here to Canada , where both he and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are banned by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and where watching Fox News is a criminal code offense.
update – Added to the Beltway Traffic Jam.
more – at Instapundit

Jaeger skewers Mary Walsh, and it looks good on her.

Speaking of taxpayer-funded nonsense, what’s one to make of this interview with Mary Walsh? Mary Walsh is the warrior princess of the CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes, who regularly subjects conservative politicians to haranguing monologues. Here she is taking a run at Alberta Premier Ralph Klein’s health care reforms:

Well, I already talked to Jean Chretien about it, but what is Ralph Klein up to? What does he want? I think he’s just drinking too much. I think he should just get off the liquor. Personally, Ralph Klein, cuz he really has that kind of, now, this is the fourth time he’s trying to drive through this private health care legislation; nobody wants it, not even the people of Alberta and he’s still doing it. He’s just like one of those drunks. He’s got a bad hangover. I don’t even know if he drinks, but just to me, it appears to me that I’m not making any kind of libelous statements about Mr. Klein and his relationship with a scotch bottle.

Now that’s the kind of classy, cerebral policy analysis we fund the CBC to do. Perhaps you’re not aware that Mary Walsh has a personal interest in health care. She is suffering from macular degeneration, which would have left her blind had she gotten the usual Canadian treatment of being stuck on a waiting list for several months. But instead she’s been rushed off for two urgent eye surgeries – in St. Louis.
She continues to read her leftist harangues off of a teleprompter albeit with large type. That she can see at all is thanks to surgery performed in private American clinics, yet she continues to rant against private health care. All the time funded by Canadian taxpayers, of course.

Another good Canadian blogger. Don’t let the “Trudeau” in “Trudeaupia” scare you off.

Tonight’s top stories on CTV National News:
Screenshot

9. Rosie O’Donnell marriage
8. Howard Stern / Clear Channel story
7. Canadian boy scout leader caught with kiddie porn
6. Man arrested for killing air traffic controller in Europe
5. Blair spy story [ed – Claire Short’s allegations reported as fact]
4. Crisis In Haiti
3. �U.S. judge blocks Conrad Black’s newspaper sale
2. Fraud and illegal trading at CIBC, Canada’s second largest bank.
And… Canada’s number one news story for Feb.26, 2004?
A month old misdirected letter.
1. Stephen Harper, a candidate for the the bigotted, stupid, redneck, rightwing Reform Conservative Party leadership, issued an apology for an error in which a letter intended for the Canadian Indian community was sent to an (Aboriginal) Indian Friendship Center.

Read the item. They certainly don’t waste an opportunity to pile on, do they?