The day couldn’t have started out any better when my alarm went off at 8 a.m. (my friends know that is pretty early for me). The very first news I heard was the successful bombing attack that killed that rabid, evil animal Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, his top "spiritual leader" and one of his top henchmen.

Could the day have started off any better than that? No Saddam Hussein circus of a trial with the strutting and defiant-behaving dictator making the court justices look intimidated.

With Al-Zarqawi, the capture, judgment, verdict and carrying out of the sentence took place with two 500-pound bombs.

There was more good news when it was announced that a "treasure trove" of information was left behind. If I were a terrorist, I would be worrying whether my name or other information about me was included in those papers.

I ran upstairs and turned on the TV to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Sure enough, the good news was true, and I resented the fact that I had to leave to go to a meeting and run some errands.

Afterwards, I hurried home and tuned in again to Fox News. You know the station. It’s the one that all the liberals pooh-pooh. It’s also the one that passed CNN, as if it were standing still, in viewership numbers. Oh yes, I also tried ABC, NBC and CBS, but I guess they thought their soaps were more important.

After a few hours of TV and being on the computer, I realized I was being selfish for being so pleased with all the good news. I knew I should get the negative gloom-and-doom spin, so I turned to CNN once again.

Sure enough, it didn’t let me down. It was having a difficult time accepting the fact that a good thing happened. One CNN reporter said we were going overboard in celebrating his demise: "In truth, he was a very small part of the insurgency."

A freelance reporter, Nir Rosen, actually said this was a setback: "Death was an advertisement for his success in becoming a martyr. This will only intensify the ’civil’ war."

Jack Cafferty, a CNN commentator on Wolf Blitzer’s comedy hour, read six e-mails, all negative, all demeaning the victory. Blitzer even quoted a terrorist website that praised his death. I am praising it also. Right now, Al-Zarqawi is a resident of hell wondering where the 72 virgins are.

Lastly, Wolf had to keep coming back to the Haditha incident to make sure it wasn’t overlooked. How about the William Jefferson incident, Wolf? Let’s not forget about that bit of news also.

Not to be undone, leftist politicians were desperately seeking out cameras to put their negative spin on the news. Sure enough, there were Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi and the perfectly coiffured John Kerry — all trying to put a damper on the day by telling the administration to bring the troops home now.

I’m surprised Pelosi didn’t suggest that there was a conspiracy involved. I’m sure she thinks the Bush administration had captured Al-Zarqawi months ago and was just waiting for the best time to bring him out. Sorry Nancy, normal people would laugh you right out of the room if they haven’t already.

It must have been a particularly sad day for John Murtha. He was the Dems’ military "expert" who was sure we were losing the war badly. Sorry John, we are winning, slowly and surely.

With all the scurrying about going on and with liberals looking for cameras, I was sure Al Gore would show up blaming the killing for worsening the global-warming situation. Either that, or claim that he was the inventor of 500-pound bombs.

Sorry Al, no one listens to you anymore. They’ve probably forgotten you even exist.

So, all in all it was a very good day. We should be very proud of our brave men and women and the job they are doing. We should be impressed with our intelligence-gathering ability and our advanced technology that allowed the bombs to be released miles away and hitting the target with pinpoint accuracy.

We should be pleased that President Bush listens to the military professionals and ignores the questionable polls taken by a suspect media. Every red-blooded, normal, patriotic, common-sense American knows this was a good day. Everyone else doesn’t matter.

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Tom Sears is a professor of accounting at Hartwick College in Oneonta. He can be reached at SearsT@hartwick.edu. His column appears every other week.