This anti-American, made-in-the-UK spoof appears to be the most popular link in the weblog community (according to Daypop, the site that led me there). Nothing even comes close. Definitely clever, I have a lot of trouble with its theme, which would have us believe Donald Rumsfeld is a more evil and dangerous man than Saddam, the US will occupy and exploit Iraq and blah blah blah.

Is anyone taking note of the extraordinary shift in public perception of this debacle? At first it seemed to be guardedly positive, and now the pendulum of public perception (I like that) has swung to the downright hostile. Maybe it’s because I am here in China, where all I hear about on TV is the peace marches just about everywhere in the world. The aforementioned Daypop site has a list of the top-40 most-cited-in-blogs stories, and the vast majority of Iraq-related stories seem to be virulently anti-American (or at least anti-Bush). What happened? Something seems to have tipped the scales, and as much as I do not like Bush & Co., I feel some sympathy for them — regime change in Iraq truly is a “noble cause,” but going about it just got a whole lot harder. If he ends up going it alone and the worst-case scenarios ensue (e.g., bloody hand-to-hand fighting, burning oil fields, chemical weapons, suicide soldiers, revitalized world-wide terrorism, etc.) he’ll be in a highly unenviable position.

I realize my “punditry” is woefully amateurish. I do it because it helps me to sort out my own thoughts. Blogging in general (and punditry in particular) offers a vehicle for catharsis, for letting go of tension and speaking my mind, a lot like writing a letter to the editor, even if the letter is never published or even sent. Still, I’ll try to keep it to a minimum; there are plenty of pundit sites out there and I wouldn’t even think of competing.

Footnote: I just went through the list again and pulled up this amazing speech by Senator Byrd. Now, I have huge issues with Byrd, the King of Pork, and I don’t agree with all that he says in this speech. But when it comes to the economy, tact and foreign policy, he makes some great points, and whoever wrote the text gets an A+. (I know, I know: This is old news, from Feb. 12, and I presume everyone else in the world has seen this already. Sometimes we in China don’t get these things as quickly or as easily as everyone else, so pardon me for being a couple of days behind everyone else.)