Nice editorial from the WSJ today, under the heading 'Pessimistic Liberalism' ...
[some selected excerpts...]
"With the Pentagon declaring the end of "major combat" in Iraq, most Americans are responding with relief and pride. Our troops have performed with skill, courage and even honorable restraint in deposing a dictator half a world away in less than a month. The puzzle is why some Americans, especially media and liberal elites, continue to wallow in pessimism about this liberation.
Two weeks ago these elites were predicting a long war with horrific casualties and global damage. Then at the sight of Iraqis cheering U.S. troops in Baghdad, they quickly moved on to fret about "looting" and "anarchy." Now that those are subsiding, our pessimists have rushed to worry that Iraqi democracy and reconstruction will be all but impossible. What is it that liberals find so dismaying about the prospect of American success?
In discounting these gloomy new predictions, it helps to consider their track record. Among the anticipated disasters that haven't come true: a "nationalist" uprising against U.S. troops, à la Vietnam; the "Arab street" enraged against us; tens of thousands of civilian casualties and a refugee and humanitarian crisis; bloody house-to-house urban combat; Iraq's oil fields aflame, lifting oil prices and sending the economy into recession; North Korea ("the greater threat") using the war as an excuse to attack; the Turks intervening in northern Iraq and at war with the Kurds; and all of course leading to world-wide mayhem."
"... today's left has become a self-insulated elite convinced of its own virtue. In this view, these members of "the anointed" operate in an echo chamber that listens to and rewards one another to the point that they refuse to admit contrary evidence. If you repeat often enough that Iraqis couldn't possibly welcome Americans as "liberators," you can't process those TV images in Baghdad. Instead of freedom, you see only "anarchy" and American troops that somehow "allowed" looting.
We aren't saying that all liberals have succumbed to this pessimism about American purpose. Many have seen Iraq's evil squarely for what it is and have supported the Bush Administration's attempts to remove it. They include the Washington Post editorial page, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, Democrats Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, such writers as Christopher Hitchens and Bill Keller, and above all Tony Blair.
But the majority of the American left, and especially its leading media voices, remain flummoxed if not embarrassed by America's Iraq victory. These include most Democrats in Congress, the editors (though not all reporters) of the New York Times and its acolytes at CNN and the major networks, and of course most academic experts. They can barely bring themselves to celebrate the downfall of a tyrant before predicting the awful challenges to come."
8:46:46 AM 
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It was as if a Monty Python character had been parachuted into the lobby of the Palestine Hotel 
Instead, let's give a hand to Dorothea Roschmann, a German soprano of great skill. A bit under-recorded, IMO. And certainly much better looking than this b/w handout pic from her agents and/or the website for the Bach Cantatas she participated in ...