Where's Ned? or, The unstoppable power of freedom!

Indeed.

And while I agree with Josh that the Lamont-Lieberman tilt is a bit of a sideshow, it is an important sideshow to get "the base" worked up for the main event. The Bob Casey campaign just ain't gonna do it. And like Atrios, I don't think this is a zero-sum game; frankly, I'm guessing there's lots of dough to go around this year.

Speaking of the sideshow (sorry, Time$elect)...

The hyperbole that has greeted the Lamont victory in some quarters is far more revealing than the victory itself. In 2006, the tired Rove strategy of equating any Democratic politician’s opposition to the Iraq war with cut-and-run defeatism in the war on terror looks desperate. The Republicans are protesting too much, methinks. A former Greenwich selectman like Mr. Lamont isn’t easily slimed as a reincarnation of Abbie Hoffman or an ally of Osama bin Laden. What Republicans really see in Mr. Lieberman’s loss is not a defeat in the war on terror but the specter of their own defeat. Mr. Lamont is but a passing embodiment of a fixed truth: most Americans think the war in Iraq was a mistake and want some plan for a measured withdrawal. That truth would prevail even had Mr. Lamont lost.

A similar panic can be found among the wave of pundits, some of them self-proclaimed liberals, who apoplectically fret that Mr. Lamont’s victory signals the hijacking of the Democratic Party by the far left (here represented by virulent bloggers) and a prospective replay of its electoral apocalypse of 1972. Whatever their political affiliation, almost all of these commentators suffer from the same syndrome: they supported the Iraq war and, with few exceptions (mainly at The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard), are now embarrassed that they did. Desperate to assert their moral superiority after misjudging a major issue of our time, they loftily declare that anyone who shares Mr. Lamont’s pronounced opposition to the Iraq war is not really serious about the war against the jihadists who attacked us on 9/11.

That’s just another version of the Cheney-Lieberman argument, and it’s hogwash. Most of the 60 percent of Americans who oppose the war in Iraq also want to win the war against Al Qaeda and its metastasizing allies: that’s one major reason they don’t want America bogged down in Iraq. Mr. Lamont’s public statements put him in that camp as well, which is why those smearing him resort to the cheap trick of citing his leftist great-uncle (the socialist Corliss Lamont) while failing to mention that his father was a Republican who served in the Nixon administration. (Mr. Lieberman, ever bipartisan, has accused Mr. Lamont of being both a closet Republican and a radical.)

These commentators are no more adept at reading the long-term implications of the Connecticut primary than they were at seeing through blatant White House propaganda about Saddam’s mushroom clouds. Their generalizations about the blogosphere are overheated; the shrillest left-wing voices on the Internet are no more representative of the whole than those of the far right. This country remains a country of the center, and opposition to the war in Iraq is now the center and (if you listen to Chuck Hagel and George Will, among other non-neoconservatives) even the center right.

As the election campaign quickens, genuine nightmares may well usurp the last gasps of Rovian fear-based politics. It’s hard to ignore the tragic reality that American troops are caught in the cross-fire of a sectarian bloodbath escalating daily, that botched American policy has strengthened Iran and Hezbollah and undermined Israel, and that our Department of Homeland Security is as ill-equipped now to prevent explosives (liquid or otherwise) in cargo as it was on 9/11. For those who’ve presided over this debacle and must face the voters in November, this is far scarier stuff than a foiled terrorist cell, nasty bloggers and Ned Lamont combined.

Meanwhile, in the civil war on which Lieberman and Bush still vow to be "resolute," it's going regional.

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Aug. 19 — Artillery shells fired from Iran have landed in remote northern villages of Iraqi Kurdistan in the past four days and have killed at least two civilians and wounded four others, a senior Kurdish official said Saturday. Dozens of families have fled the region.

The shells have been aimed at an area around Qandil Mountain, known as a base for militant Kurdish opposition groups seeking independence from Turkey and Iran, said the official, Mustafa Sayed Qadir, a senior member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which governs the eastern half of Iraqi Kurdistan.

“A lot of homes have been damaged and livestock killed,” he said. A shepherd was wounded Saturday, and two women were among the three people wounded on previous days, he added.

The government of Iraq is aware of the shelling, which has taken place occasionally in recent months, but has not taken an official position, he said.

The president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, is the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. He has at times had a close relationship with Iran, especially when he sought Iranian support in the 1990’s against rival Kurdish leaders and Saddam Hussein. But Mr. Talabani is also aware of the Iranian government’s poor treatment of its Kurdish minority. Iranian officials could not be reached for comment Saturday evening.

Iran and Turkey have sizeable Kurdish populations that live in mountainous areas bordering Iraqi Kurdistan. In recent weeks, the two countries have stepped up warnings to Kurdish militant groups, perhaps fearing that they might have enough of a haven in Iraqi Kurdistan to inject new vigor into independence movements in Iran and Turkey. Iraqi Kurdistan is autonomous from the rest of Iraq and is home to most of this country’s five million Kurds.

It is unclear what weaponry or troops Iran has amassed along its border with Iraqi Kurdistan.

American officials have accused Iran of supporting Hezbollah in its recent battle against Israel. This month, the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Iran had been pushing small Shiite militias to step up attacks against the American-led forces in retaliation for Israel’s assault on Lebanon.

An American military spokesman said some Shiite militias had been training in Iran and had received weapons from individuals or groups in that country. However, the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said the military had not found any evidence that the Iranian government was involved.

Never fear, the unstoppable power of freedom is here!

It is no coincidence that two nations that are building free societies in the heart of the Middle East, Lebanon and Iraq, are also the scenes of the most violent terrorist activity. We will defeat the terrorists by strengthening young democracies across the broader Middle East.

The way forward will be difficult, and it will require sacrifice and resolve. But America's security depends on liberty's advance in this troubled region, and we can be confident of the outcome because we know the unstoppable power of freedom.

And a pony.