Michelle Goldberg of Salon was recently invited to the Restoration Weekend conservative retreat that was attended by many prominent Republican politicians and pundits. While there she found out that they don’t really believe their own bullshit :

Meanwhile, the right’s intellectuals and activists had largely scrapped talk of democracy. Some suggested that the Iraqis themselves are our enemy, that we owe them nothing. Pipes referenced “The Mouse That Roared,” the 1959 film in which a poor country declares war on America, hoping to lose and be rebuilt like Germany and Japan. The implication seemed to be that Iraq is both lucky and greedy.

Meanwhile, those troubled by Bush’s decision to cut and run blamed it on Democrats and the liberal media, who through their unfair scrutiny of irrelevancies like Bush’s uranium claim and the Valerie Plame affair were sapping the national will.
. . .
In a column this week, conservative writer and talk-show host Armstrong Williams wrote: “The administration’s decision to depose Saddam Hussein represents the first meaningful step in 50 years of attacking the basic problem of hopelessness, tyranny and poverty in that region. This historic step will make senate reform possible.”

Williams chose his words carefully, because while he may believe in senate reform, he’s dismissive of the idea that democracy itself can work in Iraq. Sitting on a panel called “The Media and the War,” Williams spoke of Muslims’ knack for being wrong about everything. “I can’t think of one time when we’ve had a Muslim on the air, when we asked deep, penetrating questions, where they’re on the right side,” he said. “You find me a Muslim who, if you ask the right question, they’ll come out on the right side of the issue. You can’t find them.”

After the panel I asked Williams how this Muslim failing bodes for democracy in Iraq. He snorted. “That’s a pipe dream,” he said, laughing. “Democracy in Iraq?” he repeated, as if he’d never heard anything so preposterous. Noting that the country had never been senate before, he asked, “What makes you think it’s going to work now?”

So lemme get this straight :