Got It!

I have it! New Feature from the VRWC, all you hep cats and kittens (crikey, but 50’s slang is just chock full of subtle inequities and sexism, eh?). A fun one… well, fun for me, at least.

That’s right: it’s time for a

GRATUITOUS INSTAPUNDIT SHOT!!!!!

(pause)

A shame I can’t increase font size.

Still, what is a GRATUITOUS INSTAPUNDIT SHOT!!!!!, I hear you ask? Simple: I go look at Instapundit, find something that he’s linked to and talk about that. Unlike Frank over at IMAO (a sometimes guilty pleasure of mine), I am above attempting to leech links from the Zombi Mast… excuse me, ‘Instadude’. Not that I’d object if Loyal Minions started boostering this site, mind you.

(pause)

I said, NOT THAT I’D OBJECT…

Oh, never mind. Today’s GRATUITOUS INSTAPUNDIT SHOT!!!!! (When do I stop typing it out that way? When your mind takes you to the Bad Place, of course) takes us to Flit, where Bruce ROLSTON talks about that Independent article about the supposed coming internationalization of forces in Iraq.

I say ‘supposed’, of course, because right now it’s based on the statement of one guy – Javier Solana – who is currently the EU’s foreign policy chief and was formerly NATO’s Secretary-General. A quick look around indicates the proverbial crickets from the rest of our friends in the Mass Media, so we’re on our own until they get around to talking about it. As usual.

So, let us assume, along with Bruce (and Kevin Drum that this article is accurate. What would this mean? Depends on your point of view: Drum seems to think that this is primarily a serious and valuable concession of the Bush Administration to the Democratic Party’s position, while ROLSTON seems to think that this is primarily a serious and valuable concession of the United States to the NATO nations already contributing troops. Your call to who is more right; very conceivably, they both are. Whether or not this ends up with certain Old European nations getting concessions or not will probably depend on just how this debate is couched: thankfully, the people doing the negotiating probably share with certain elements of the Left the fond (and profoundly mistaken) belief that Bush is an idiot, so if this turns out to result in NATO being given more oomph without significant concessions made by the US, color me unsurprised. We’ll have to see how this goes down.

Of course, all of this makes the assumption that Solana is not talking out of his butt: it’s a reasonable assumption (why would he say it, otherwise?), but as Tac pointed out in Kevin’s comment thread (back before it mutated), the Germans have already disavowed something Solana said earlier…