BLOGGING WILL BE LIGHT AGAIN TODAY, but there’s lots of cool stuff elsewhere in the Blogosphere. Steven Den Beste has been on something of a roll of late, and The Command Post continues to bring you the latest minute-by-minute war news so that I don’t have to. Oxblog and Samizdata bring a trans-Atlantic perspective (and it’s later there, so they’ve had more time to post). And Bill Quick and Tim Blair have lots of posts, too.

UPDATE: Here’s more debunking of the claim on IndyMedia that the statue-toppling was staged.

And read this Mark Steyn column where he de-spins the (revised, new) doom-spinners. Excerpt:

1) “Iraq’s slide into violent anarchy” (Guardian, April 11). Say what you like about Saddam, but he ran a tight ship and you didn’t have to nail down your nest of tables: since the Brits took over, Basra’s property crime is heading in an alarmingly Cheltenhamesque direction. MBITRW (Meanwhile Back In The Real World): A year from now, Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs. . . .

10) America is already losing the peace. MBITRW: In a year’s time, Iraq will be, at a bare minimum, the least badly governed state in the Arab world and, at best, pleasant, civilised and thriving. In short: not a bad three weeks’ work.

Read the rest.

Oh, and read Matt Welch on the Cuban journalist show-trials — and the deafening silence (or worse) from some quarters in response. Is there a thug anywhere that the left will criticize these days?