As usual, I’m huffing and puffing to catch up on past due Council posts, announcing the winners. So this week I am taking the penitent’s route: two weeks in two days. I’d do two days in one go, but I’m too ADDled to stay the course and you wouldn’t be able to decipher the second part. I know: having tried to write it, even I couldn’t read what I’d written. Better to spare you and make two posts. Besides, it allows more focus on the winners.

So here’s the first late edition, for the week of June 16th:

Rightwing Nuthouse’s essay on the Dem/MSM alignment when it comes to peeing on the Cheerios of the good guys was done in his ususal brilliant style. Talking about the Coalition-caused death of al Zarqawi, Rick notes that the Unwholesome Twosome – the Democratic Party and the MSM outlet of your choice – had, by the end of the day returned to their tired old “what-have-you-done-for-me-today” mantra, this time demanding to know why Osama was still stalking the streets. One certainly has to give them credit for chutzpah in their gratitude.

As Rick says:

That the media began to spin the story every which way from Sunday was no surprise. In any other context, their desperate attempts to deflect attention from the death of Zarqawi and put the emphasis on the unsuccessful hunt for bin Landen could be seen as a pitiful attempt at comedy, so riotously off kilter their killjoy attitude became by day’s end. It makes one wonder what kind of headlines they would have generated during World War II following the death of Hitler: “German Chancellor dead: No Effect on Quagmire in the Pacific Seen.”

Gates of Vienna tied for second place with Done With Mirrors. The Gates entry was a rant, I’m afraid; one of the hazards of blogging and having one’s ankles bitten too often. Apologies to all who snoozed through it. Mirrors, however, has a gem, and I will give you only his headline, so as not to spoil the post. Go read “Hix Nix Chix.” You’ll be jealous you didn’t think of such a splendid title for such odiferous behavior.

In the non Council posts, A Newer World earned first place with his explanation of “One Liberal’s Argument for Still Staying in Iraq.” While the premises of his argument are not to my thinking, I admire the conclusions he draws from them, and the courage it must take to make his stand based on those ideas:

Can anyone seriously argue that this situation will improve rather than worsen if U.S. forces were to immediately withdraw? Can anyone seriously argue that it will be good for the people of Iraq if we just pick up and leave?

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was and remains an unforgivable castatrophe. The United States has created a humanitarian disaster. Leaving now will only make that disaster worse.

IMHO, Saddam Hussein was a “humanitarian disaster” of a greater order of magnitude than anything the United States has done in Iraq or will ever do anytime, anywhere. I find what we have done not only forgivable but as far from a catastrophe as one can get and still understand the meaning of that word. In fact, for me, the liberal mis-use of the English language by Liberals is one of the problems I have with their “side” of this issue.

Those who stand and do nothing but wring their hands will never have the gratitude of the families of those skeletons rotting in the mass graves we respectfully unearthed so they could have decent burials. And for all the chaos, we have not begun to approach the suffering that Stalin’s biggest admirer imposed on his own people. The only thing they had to look forward to was rule by Uday and Qsay.

A Newer World’s ideas will not create anything novel if they are in this vein. Instead we will have more Pol Pots, more Che Gueveras, more Idi Amins, more corrupt ngos pretending to do something besides line their own pockets.

I’ll go with the karma we’ve created, thanks anyway. Full of mistakes, we still dare to act. And for that we stand proud.

Wretchard at the Belmont Club was second for his fisking of Malloch Brown’s criticism of the U.S.

Remember Mr. Brown? He’s the UN Deputy-Secretary General who gave us a good talking to for being so…so, oh, I don’t know…maybe just so unalterably, unattractively American.

Here’s part of the speech Wretchard quoted:

…my underlying message, which is a warning about the serious consequences of a decades-long tendency by US Administrations of both parties to engage only fitfully with the UN, is not one a sitting United Nations official would normally make to an audience like this.

But I feel it is a message that urgently needs to be aired. And as someone who has spent most of his adult life in this country, only a part of it at the UN, I hope you will take it in the spirit in which it is meant: as a sincere and constructive critique of U.S. policy towards the UN by a friend and admirer. Because the fact is that the prevailing practice of seeking to use the UN almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable. You will lose the UN one way or another.

Oh, please, Mr. Brown. From your mouth to God’s ears. For all our sakes, move your organization lock, stock and barrel to Belgium. Steal the silver on your way out — whatever — be our guest as long as you’re no longer our boarder. Just gooooo.

They’d love you in Brussels and we’d breathe free, having gotten rid of the rotten mollusk on Oyster Bay…

Be sure to read Wretchard’s amusing fisk, done in a table, of Mr. Brown’s speech. Needless to say, John Bolton had a few choice words for Kofi’s stand-in.

The ever-patient Watcher still has the links up. Go here and read the rest.