LOS ANGELES: American television watchers following developments in Baghdad this week have found it hard to escape a sense of gloating by right-wing commentators and an unrelenting chorus of “I told you so” directed at the war’s critics.

The live broadcast on Thursday of fierce firefights in Baghdad and news of continued suicide bombing attacks and widespread looting could hardly dampen the air of jubilation that has infected the American mass media. Over and over again, news programmes broadcast scenes of ecstatic Iraqis toppling statues of Iraq’s possibly former leader Saddam Hussein, beating the missing dictator’s image with their shoes and kissing American soldiers.

For once, the headlines on the aggressively conservative Fox News were little different from many of the nation’s leading newspapers. “Victory in Baghdad” crowed the most popular 24-hour news channel.

“Saddam Falls” blared the headline in the generally liberal San Jose Mercury News while USA Today, America’s best-selling paper, noted how the “world marvels at celebration war’s architects had predicted”.

“See Ya Saddam” said the San Francisco Chronicle while the New York Post gave 90 per cent of its front page to a picture of the toppled statue, with a one word headline, “LIBERTY”.

Although the White House graciously noted that it was no time to gloat, the same kind of munificence was clearly absent in the vitriolic right-wing media.

“Expect a barrage of gloating from those who backed military action. We wouldn’t miss it for the world!” said the New York Post. “The nattering nabobs could see nothing but calamity and chaos from military action in Iraq by the US and its allies.”

The left-wing magazine Mother Jones was clearly on the defensive. “The Right, Rampant” was the journal’s headline. “The war party is feeling vindicated and vindictive. The pent up neo-conservative frustration is bursting forth, along with a mighty chorus of ‘I told you so’ from the right.”

But noting the many challenges that still lie ahead like finding Saddam and his alleged weapons of mass destruction, overcoming the diehard remnants of the Iraqi regime and rebuilding the country into a stabilizing element in the Middle East, the paper asked: “Is it too early to celebrate and count coup?”

For many right-wing commentators the answer was obviously “no”. Rush Limbaugh, the high priest of American right-wingers, set the tone on his radio show. “The more the left talks, the more the polling numbers for the president and the war go up. Everything that we said would happen is happening. We have shown the world victory. It will have just the opposite effect than the naysayers predicted: new terrorism, and new attacks haven’t materialized. And they won’t.”

Limbaugh demanded that the war’s critics are made to eat humble pie. “The anti-American crowd is not going to go away. They are going to turn what is obviously vindication into failure. Just as we won the battle to liberate Iraq, so will we win the battle to liberate America from the hearts and the minds of the blame-America-first crowd.”

Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas was even more vindictive. “From Hollywood’s Martin Sheen and Michael Moore to European ‘leaders’, the United Nations and aging peaceniks and their illegitimate progeny, the left has suffered a stunning defeat,” he blasted. “These losers were wrong from the beginning. Their credibility is on a par with the Iraqi information minister who claimed that no coalition tanks had entered Baghdad at a time when the tanks could be seen and heard.”

For these commentators, the focus of The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and others on the future challenges in Iraq was the “elite media’s” crafty plot to diminish the glory of the stunning military victory. “Even today, many in the elite media are reluctant to acknowledge the obvious,” said Clifford May of The National Review.

Most left-wing spokesmen were conspicuously absent from the airwaves. Maybe no one wanted to listen to them. Or perhaps they did not relish having to justify their positions against a backdrop of rejoicing Iraqi citizens. One of the few who did raise his voice was Greil Marcus. “Responsible war critics never thought the US was going to lose, or even suffer many casualties,” he noted in the Boston Globe. “Rather, the danger was that we would unleash chaos in Iraq, inflame the Arab world by inflicting civilian casualties (which we have certainly done), and cause terrible problems for ourselves down the road, such as creating a new generation of revenge-seeking terrorists.”—dpa