Via Michael Ledeen’s blog, I see that the look-how-many-Iraqi-potholes-we’ve-filled meme lives on in the pro-war blogosphere, long after even Arthur Chrenkoff quit, um, “Chrenkin’ off”:
Glenn Reynolds has an email from Michael Yon, the great milblogger and photographer who may have been the first reporter to suggest that there was a “civil war†going on in Iraq. In short, he’s no apologist for W. His email to the Instapundit is quite dramatic, since he reports on the absence of violence. No shooting, no rockets, no mortars, every now and then an IED. Almost apologetically he says “I have no bad news to report today.â€
And here’s the part that popped open my sleepy eyes:
In addition to basic services being restored, the city of Hit has rebuilt its library. Citizens had stored away the books during the war here. They are preparing to re-stock the library.
Just compare those three simple declarative sentences to the stereotype of Iraqi Arabs as unbeknighted, ignorant barbarians who could not possibly govern themselves.
Speaking of ignorance – since Ledeen is what passes for a brain among the warbots – there’s no such word as “unbeknighted,” or even “beknighted.” The word he’s looking for here is “benighted,” meaning unenlightened. Of course, if the Iraqis were stereotyped as “unbenighted,” that would be a compliment, so Ledeen, as usual, is peddling nonsense squared, wrapped in illiteracy.