John Podhoretz on the Iraqi elections and the disgraceful behavior of mainstream media and the leading lights of the Democratic Party: Vindicated.

In another jaw-dropping display, Fareed Zakaria soberly informs us in this week’s issue [of Newsweek] that Iraq’s democratic evolution is probably doomed because — get this — it isn’t proceeding according to a plan he outlined in a book he published two years ago.

No, I’m not kidding.

“No matter how the voting turns out,” Zakaria wrote, “the prospects for genuine democracy in Iraq are increasingly grim … In April 2003, around the time Baghdad fell, I published a book that described the path to liberal democracy … In Newsweek that month, I outlined the three conditions Iraq had to fulfill to avoid this fate. It is currently doing badly at all three.”

Whoa, better stop the vote counting, Omar! You Iraqis aren’t following the Zakaria Plan! Tell you what — I’ll go to my dentist’s office and send you an old copy of Newsweek from his coffee table so that you can get yourself right with Zakaria.

Yesterday was a day for Democrats and opponents of George W. Bush to swallow their bile and retract their claws and join just for a moment in celebration of an amazing and thrilling human drama in a land that has seen more than its share of thrilling human drama over the past 5,000 years.

But you just couldn’t do it, could you?

Losers.

UPDATE at 1/31/05 8:28:05 am:

And if you want to see the mean-spirited dregs of humanity at their very worst, you can always find them at Democratic Underground: The Iraq vote is making me sick this morning.