Those two bastards are cold meat, to paraphrase Orwell. The air around here smells just a little better. I imagine that this American coup by a CIA-Delta Force hit squad will turn the tables against the doomsayers for the next week or so. It ought to shut up the Bush Lied Brigade for a while; that's just so early July. It also ought to do serious damage to the cause of the thuggish, murderous Baath-Saddam loyalists, the cause Tikrit Tommy Alcoverro and Rafael "I Interviewed Brian Epstein" Ramos have baptized the Iraqi Resistance.

Meanwhile, the unfortunate David Kelly suicide is becoming seen by many to be more his own and the BBC's fault than the British government's. Perceptions are changing. The BBC is going to take a tremendous hit over this, because they've been forced to admit that Kelly really was their source--and their only one. That is, they did not get double, independent corroboration of their story the way they're supposed to and the way Woodward and Bernstein did during Watergate. And Kelly lied under oath before Parliament. The BBC must have known his claim not to be the BBC's sole source was false. Yet they did not say so; they covered up the truth for at least 24 hours.

ETA struck today with two bombs in hotels, one in Alicante and the other in Benidorm. Both are popular Mediterranean vacation spots. A total of thirteen people were wounded; a German tourist is in a coma. Among the injured were five cops trying to localize one of the bombs. The Vanguardia is reporting that ETA is planning a campaign of small-time kidnappings, Latin American-style, looking for small but quickly paid ransoms of a few thousand euros. I am convinced that ETA is badly hurt and is about to collapse, despite its support on the street from radical youths. The recent bust of nine ETA members in Mexico didn't help them much; the arrested were part of ETA's financial apparatus. They cannot keep an active cell operating for more than a couple of weeks; the dirtbags who killed the two cops in Sanguesa were arrested only a few days after their crime. This cell will be quickly broken up, too.