Here’s his opener:

I’m just appalled by the cheerleading tone of US news coverage of the so-called elections in Iraq on Sunday. I said on television last week that this event is a “political earthquake” and “a historical first step” for Iraq. It is an event of the utmost importance, for Iraq, the Middle East, and the world. All the boosterism has a kernel of truth to it, of course. Iraqis hadn’t been able to choose their leaders at all in recent decades, even by some strange process where they chose unknown leaders. But this process is not a model for anything, and would not willingly be imitated by anyone else in the region. The 1997 elections in Iran were much more democratic, as were the 2002 elections in Bahrain and Pakistan.

Me: Okay, so he’s “appalled” because while he said that this event is a “political earthquake,” a “historical first step” and of “the utmost importance” it’s just wrong, wrong, wrong for other media outlets to say the same thing? I don’t get it.

He then goes on to document that Bush didn’t originally want this kind of election but he had to go with it because that’s what Sistani wanted. Uh, okey dokey. I just think it’s refreshing when anti-Bush critics accuse him of being too flexible. It’s such a nice change of pace from the usual stuff about him being a rigid ideologue.

He then writes, “With all the hoopla, it is easy to forget that this was an extremely troubling and flawed ‘election.’ Iraq is an armed camp. There were troops and security checkpoints everywhere. Vehicle traffic was banned.”

I don’t know which rah-rah for America station he was watching, but I do recall that this was a fairly well-covered fact. It’s not easy to forget. Indeed, it’s impossible to forget because the underlying necessity for such security is what makes this such an uplifting story, even though Cole is beyond miserly when it comes to dispensing adjectives celebrating the heroism of the Iraqi people. His prose in the wake of this histroic event is so antiseptic you could eat off it.

C’mon dude, of course this wasn’t the highwater mark of democracy and human liberty we all recognized the Bahrainian elections of 2002 to have been. But it was a pretty good day. Don’t let the fact that the folks you don’t like are happy about it get in the way of recognizing that.