An excellent rant in Australia’s Herald Sun: They Were Wrong. (Hat tip: msimon.) Read it all; it’s worth the time.

WHEN protesters marched to stop this war of liberation, Saddam Hussein was filmed gloating to his generals. “They support you,” he crowed.

So where are you today, you whom Saddam reckoned among his friends?

Where are you who waved anti-war banners that pouted: “Not In Our Name”?

Did you see the Iraqi people kiss and hug the allied soldiers — our soldiers — who gave them their freedom after decades of terror?

Now say it again, if you dare: Not In Our Name. [Oh, they will dare, all right. If there’s one thing we know for certain about the “anti-war” crowd, it’s that they have no shame. –ed.]

Did you see our soldiers break open Saddam’s torture centres and his jails for children, or see their survivors praise us, showing the livid scars left by Saddam’s thugs, or the stumps where their ears had been?

Did you see the jubilant crowds tear down the statues of the butcher who had robbed them, jailed them, shot them, gassed them and sent their sons into three disastrous wars?

Saddam is gone, and his worst weapons will be found and destroyed. His people have lost a tyrant. Terrorists have lost a sponsor. Iraq’s neighbours have lost a threat. Dictators elsewhere have lost sleep. And to all this, our anti-war protesters said: Not In Our Name.

It is astonishing that so many Australians — including most of the people who preach and teach — tried so hard to stop all this from happening, by resisting the only means we had left of ending Saddam’s evil.

How is it that people priding themselves on morality in fact aided a genocidal killer, and not his victims? How is it they now watch Iraqis celebrate their liberation, and feel … sad?