AS PEOPLE TUT-TUT over the Marine who put the American flag up on Saddam’s statue, Malcolm Hutty observes:

The Iraqi crowd cheered when the US flag was raised. Rageh Omah, BBC reporter on the spot, couldn’t hear the sonorous commentry in the studio, and made the possibly career-limiting mistake of answering the question “How is the crowd reacting to the American flag?” with the simple truth. This answer has obviously not been repeated in evening bulletins.

Yes, I was thinking about that last night. I was also thinking that if it inspires feelings of impotence and fear in audiences around the world, that may be a good thing. We were told back in 1991 that a reason not to invade Baghdad was the potential Arab unhappiness at seeing “American tanks in the streets of an Arab capital.”

Given how things went in the intervening decade-plus in which American tanks were not seen in the streets of an Arab capital, I think it’s safe to call that concern misplaced.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis reports:

Cpl. Edward Chin, the man who brought down Saddam yesterday, is on the Today show right now. The flag he put up there was in the Pentagon when it was attacked on 9.11.

That puts a bit of a different spin on it, doesn’t it?