Is our bloggers learning?

As Scott pointed out earlier today, Charles Johnson among others are evidently incapable of discerning the plain meaning of the phrase “at that time” when it follows immediately a sentence that concludes with the phrase “after the Persian Gulf War.” It’s been interesting to go back and look at the succession of updates to these breathless posts from last night and this morning, as the functionally illiterate warbloggers retreat redeploy, having realized their initial excitement was sadly misplaced. As far as I’m concerned, the award for best update — if by “best update” we mean something like “most intellectually unserious update” — goes to none other than Paul Mirengoff at Powerline, who pinched out this earlier this afternoon:

Frankly, I’m not sure there’s much of a distinction here. If Saddam’s regime was capable of building an atom bomb within a year in 1991, then it was capable of doing so in 2002. And it’s hard to believe that, in light of the progress arch-rival Iran had made on that front, Saddam would not have completed the job by now had he not been overthrown.

Given that Iran lacks thousands of centrifuges needed to generate the necessary amount of uranium for an actual bomb; and given that they’ve only boasted of enriching uranium to about 3%; and given that we’re even lacking to this point a Colin Powell-at-the-UN moment in which the Bush administration tries to apprise the rest of the world (with slam-dunk evidence) of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program; and given that —

Oh, forget it.

Mr. Scotch? Allow me to introduce you to some of my favorite ice cubes. Oh, I see you’ve met before. . . .