Defeat is Victory

Someone must have increased Amir Taheri's chocolate ration. He has a new opinion piece in the NY Post today, in which he insists that up is down and black is white. He also takes a few swings at some unnameable people.

No doubt, many nostalgics of Saddam Hussein had been praying that the Aug. 15 deadline would not be met. These are people who want Iraq to fail so that they could prove that George W. Bush and Tony Blair were wrong in toppling the Ba'athist regime in Baghdad.

He never makes clear who these people are, but gives us a few more clues:

as some dons of dilatory deeds have claimed

the serial filibusterers on Capitol Hill

Serial filibusterer? Who could that be?

"Don't tell me we haven't filibustered judges and that we don't have the right to filibuster judges on the floor of the Senate. Of course we do. That is our constitutional role." - Sen. Bob Smith (R-New Hampshire)

No, not them, the other serial filibusterers.
Anyway, how could the missed deadline be defined as a "Victory"?

The answer is that while the postponement was a tactical setback for the Iraqi lawmakers, it represented a strategic advance for the practice of democracy in the newly liberated country. The Iraqis working on the draft resisted intense pressure from all quarters, including Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani (the Shiite top cleric) and Zalmay Khalilzad (the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad) to brush disagreements under the carpet and come up with "something."

Of course. A victory for democracy. That's what I'll tell the phone company the next time I'm late paying the bill. But those dons of dilatory deeds will probably not be too impressed.