You go, Arianna

Salon.com The Washington establishment fails Logic 101

I just got back from a trip to the Happiest Place on Earth. Didn't ride the teacups, though. Because I wasn't in Disneyland but in Washington, D.C., where everyone is walking on air, swept away by the Beltway's latest consensus: President Bush was right on Iraq, and as a result, Tomorrowland in the Middle East will feature an E-ticket ride on the Matterhorn of freedom and democracy.

The political and cultural establishment has gone positively Goofy over this notion. In the corridors of power, Republicans are high-fiving and Democrats are nodding in agreement and patting themselves on the back for how graciously they've been able to accept the fact that they were wrong. The groupthink in the nation's capital would be the envy of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.

Even heroes of mine like Jon Stewart and my buddy Bill Maher have hopped on the Bush bandwagon. "I've been supportive of President Bush," Maher told Wolf Blitzer this week, "now that I think Iraq is turning around ... He had a bigger and better idea than the rest of us."

She gets the logical fallacy wrong (it's post hoc ergo propter hoc). But it is still a strong, insightful piece. And she seems as worried as I am about how the Kool Aid is getting around.