Gasp!

Could Bush actually have done something (or possibly many things) right?! (and more importantly, could the NYT be recognizing it!?)

At the very least, Mr. Bush is feeling the glow of the recent flurry of impulses toward democracy in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where events have put him on a bit of a roll and some of his sharpest critics on the defensive. It now seems just possible that Mr. Bush and aides like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz were not wrong to argue that the "status quo of despotism cannot be ignored or appeased, kept in a box or cut off," as the president put it in a speech at the National Defense University here.

"For Bush, a Taste of Vindication in Mideast", By TODD S. PURDUM, NYT, 3/9/05