Au contraire I think it is patently obvious that he does have a problem with the code as written, otherwise why spend the energy to rebut it so vigorously?
He wasn't rebutting the code; he was rebutting the claims about following the C standard, which were made separate from the code. You missed this because its' buried in all of Linus' ranting. Linus merged these changes a few minutes later with no further discussion.