When in the history of Afghanistan has this not been the case?

Your assumption here is that terrorists have unlimited resources and that by holding on, they can win. What evidence have you to provide that Iraq desires a theocracy?

Your insults about young Republicans enlisting are just that. Perhaps if you’d appealed to a principled point about recruitment, I’d listen, but you come across as a petulent child.

(AP) Although the Army will not release its numbers until Friday, it fell about 25 percent short of its target of signing up 6,700 recruits in May, officials said Wednesday. The gap would have been even wider but for the fact that the target was lowered by 1,350.

The Army also missed its monthly targets in April, March and February  each month worse than the one before. In February it fell 27 percent short; in March the gap was 31 percent, and in April it was 42 percent…

So the Army admits that it lowered its recruiting target for May– from 8,050 to 6,700– because it needed to try and make its dismal totals look better. Then what happened? They still fell miserably short of the sandbagged goal! So, quite naturally, what did the Bushie Pentagon do? They lowered the bar even further for June (to 5650), even though that’s the month when young people graduate school and are ripe for the picking. I’m sure the Pentagon brass breathed a sigh of relief at having passed that bargain-basement, marked-down goal (though they admit they’re going to be lucky to pass their sandbagged annual recruitment goal). Then they quickly held a propaganda conference to toss this rancid bit of red meat to the gullible Bushie faithful, with an assist from the corporate whore media. I guess they didn’t work fast enough to paper over the truth that had already gotten out, though.

Try again. Second thought, don’t. Just call all your young Republican friends who aren’t already fighting Dear Leader’s war, so that they can get out there and shore up these pathetic numbers. Then you can all send me an e-mail from the imperial/colonial sandbox telling me how wrong I was.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050629/us_nm/arms_usa_recruiting_dc

Have a look.

Piscem natare doces.

As Jonathan Swift once said, and I think it’s appropriate of what you’ve represented here. ; “It’s impossible to reason a man out of something he hasn’t reasoned himself into”.

I noticed that you didn’t bother to address the opening salvo of my latest comment. What’s the matter? Are the words of the Bushies’ own mouthpieces, pre-9/11, not vague enough for you to parse? Is that why you totally ignored that part?

Interesting how the 9-11 commision is hereby declared  watered down by you, simply because there was no damning information to be found.

Who said that there was no damning evidence to be found? I recall, for example, a certain memo from August of 2001, a memo about which Condi Rice prevaricated until the cows came home”. For anyone paying attention, the proceedings of the committee made it obvious that the Bushies were complicit in the ‘failures’ of 9/11. There was damning information aplenty. The “watered-down” phrase refers to the lack of authority held by the commission. Not only did it have no authority to punish the guilty, but it allowed Bush and Cheney the luxury of not testifying in public or on the record. What was the point of that? Compare this to the years-long, multi-million dollar (taxpayer-funded) fishing expedition which wound up putting Bill Clinton under oath so that he could foolishly lie about a blow job. Let’s compare again: Blow job, impeachment hearings; allowing 9/11, handshake. That’s watered down.

Read about British anti-narcotics aid here

That’s a nice token effort by the Brits, but all it does is prove my point, which the article sums up nicely by concluding this way: “Afghanistan has once again become the world s largest producer of opium.” This has happened because the only semblance of order in the country, the Taliban, were removed from power by the Bushies’ mad crusade of ‘infinite justice’. There was no sufficient order brought in to fill the power vacuum, and Afghanistan (outside of Kabul) returned to its own peculiar brand of ‘order’. Why didn’t the Bushies send in the necessary manpower and funding to stabilize A-stan? Oh, that’s right; there was that urgent problem in Iraq.

These are just a few examples; your whole diatribe is like this, or worse. I’ve wasted enough of my time on you. Come back when you learn how to think critically, and not just drone on with ludicrously baseless statements.

I didn t put any of those people in office. All the representatives for whom I voted opted against subverting the constitution by granting unlimited war powers to Bush.
> More unsubstantiated conjecture. Just what are unlimited war powers and where do you find such language?

However, the bulk of the blame must be laid at the feet of the executive branch who fabricated the case for war (even though I was never deceived; senators and reps with access to more info than I should have been at least as savvy) and carried it out.
> Mightn t the evidence from 2 congressional investigations and one British, that found absolutely no tampering of intelligence or coercion of analysts betray this point you keep trying to make? Further, how is it that you, a civilian, posessed better intelligence than the U.S., the British, the Israelis, et.al?

Democratic voters should, indeed, be asking themselves if they will choose to re-elect their congresspeople who voted in favor of the war. Still, that doesn t make what the Bushies did right.
>Nothing here makes a compelling case for the Iraq war being unprincipled or unjust, it s just opinion without supportive evidence or reason.

Let s call it the  Indictment on Terror and send them all to the International Criminal Court. That ll show  em!
We ve covered this ground. The Bushies may have spread the terrorists around, but they haven t stopped them. Moreover, they have yet to catch Osama bin Laden. This leads to the next bit of bullsh-t:
> History has myriad examples where timidity, not audacity, had destroyed momentum and with it any such luck of victory. Does military history advise us that armies on the verge of victory should press their luck and surge on to utterly destroy their crippled enemies, or cease with the triumph at hand?
>Do we suffer defeat like the Persians at Salamis? Or the legions at Cannae? Or are we to continue on as to finish the task of removing a fascist and implementing legitimate government in the wake?
Why would Bin Laden himself, initially proclaim in his tapes that America is a paper tiger and boast of his popularity in mosques and then in subsequent tapes bellyache that our bombs were bigger than his and therefore unfair in his infantile tit for tat? Is this the message of a victorious leader?

I ve friends who served and currently serve. Anytime someone asks  where is Bin Laden of one of them, you don t see a more frustrated look. One man being captured is not the end of the organization, nor of the war on terror.
This is the same chickensh-t excuse spouted by the allegedly tough, no-nonsense Dubya when confronted with his lack of success in getting bin Laden  dead or alive like he swore he would. At least Dubya didn t try and hide his pathetic excuse behind the apocryphal fatigues of  soldiers that I know&  You don t need to construct panty-waste excuses for Dubya; he ll come up with his own.
> Such insouciance toward my comrades is something that illustrates your own inability to set apart your hatred of the president from people you do not know. Amazing the ability you have to hold special knowledge of my social network and the ability to dismiss it while having so such knowledge of who I am and the company I keep. Irrational.
> There can be no doubt that Bin Laden being captured would be a positive development, though it by no means concludes the war on terror. He s not a general of a standing army. Repeating the point about  still don t have Bin Laden makes you sound more like Al Sharpton or others who lack the ability, or will to uncouple a candidate s comments from the enacted policy of a president.

This sounds astonishly similar to Dean s stump speech. Do you have some evidence of your claim that jihadists/insurgents are  winning , or do you feel supported by your own acrimonious statements?
Here you ve made Boneheaded Assumption No. 53. The Iraq quagmire is not necessarily a zero-sum game, and I didn t say that it is. The insurgents in Iraq know that they can t  defeat the U.S. militarily. However, the Bushies have placed the U.S. military in a situation where they are largely unpopular and unwanted, not to mention understaffed and ill-equipped. The insurgents don t have to win, they just have to inflict enough damage long enough so that enough of the U.S. public will finally wake up to the fact that illegally invading and occupying a sovereign nation especially without enough troops or an actual plan was a bad idea that needs to be aborted yesterday. This leads into the final point that I will bother to clarify:
>You d said: Those assholes have us mired in an unwinnable war in Iraq, one that has become a training ground for a new generation of anti-U.S. terrorists.

>First off, explain how this training ground improves the lifespan of a jihadist. Weren t we warned of jihadists pouring into Afghanistan from Pakistan? I recall that some did, much to their dismay.

Your assumption here is that terrorists have unlimited resources and that by holding on, they can win. What evidence have you to provide that Iraq desires a theocracy?
These jihadists,( who were likely to be loyal anti-western acolytes before the Iraq invasion) being confronted at such a distance from our homeland makes for a much more sound strategy than retreat.
Kofi Annan disagrees with your assesment…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/20/AR2005062001176.html

This tired old lefty trope about military service as a requisite for flexing military muscle abroad is so useless and lacking in principle.
Your attempt to build a straw man out of my lovely rhetorical construction fails miserably, of course.
>You said, quote: These cowards all dodged military service when they had the chance to serve in uniform, so maybe it s no wonder they don t have the balls to ask their constituents (especially those brave young College Republicans) to help shore up the perilously overstretched ranks of our fighting forces.
>You fail to even make the distinction of who in the administration you are remarking about, then go on to posit young College Republicans as some sort of hypocritical group who might also be cowards who should be compelled to serve by vitrue of party affiliation. No reasoning, simply emotive drivel. Irrational.

There is no  lefty trope that fits your description. The idea has nothing to with military service being a requisite. It has everything to do with gauging the moral authority of leaders in how they handle potential military entanglements.
>Not that you d given any reasoning to support this view. Only  these cowards seemed to suffice. More irrationality on your part with questioning moral authority yet giving no examples of such.

Clinton, for example, was quick to shoot missiles and drop bombs, but largely proved hesitant to commit ground troops to any situation (judging by his miserable performance in Somalia, that might have been a good idea)
>It s possible that Reagan and Bush possesed a faith in the universality of human liberty that Clinton did not.

The Bushies, to a man, were almost all draft dodgers of one sort or another. They couldn t wait to send U.S. troops into ill-advised, half-baked foreign adventures; in the case of Iraq, we know just how poorly this can turn out. This isn t even taking into account that they lied to justify getting the U.S. into Iraq.

> You repeat this mantra of  They Lied as if by sheer repetition your case will be proven. Do you ever bother to support this fiction with proofs?

Rove overshot the bow, but his comment hit MoveOn.org with precision.( Submitting a petition is precisely what MoveOn.org did. It was a petition imploring the powers that be to  use moderation and restraint in responding to the terrorist attacks against the United States. 
Here you take a different excuse-making tack. Rove wasn t really wrong, he just wasn t specific. Bullshit. MoveOn.org s request for the use of moderation and restraint was not a request for the Bushies to do nothing. The people at MoveOn.org were concerned that the Bushies would fly off the handle and bomb the shit out of scores of innocent people, and carry out heavy-handed policies that would make things worse.

¢’ The fact is that Pariser and Pickering wrote a petition that was on 9-11peace.org which read& We implore the powers that be to use, wherever possible, international judicial institutions and international human rights law to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks, rather than the instruments of war, violence or destruction. Furthermore, we assert that the government of a nation must be presumed separate and distinct from any terrorist group that may operate within its borders, and therefore cannot be held unduly accountable for the latter’s crimes. . .
¢’ What Rove said was factual, just look at the record. That s an anti-war petition.

Facts on the ground: the Bushies phony puppet Afghan  democracy has little or no power outside of the Kabul area.
>Anyone with the sort of pettiness on the scale you display here can t be aware of some facts.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=13472&Cr=Afghanistan&Cr1=
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-02/15/content_2578797.htm
http://www.harolddoan.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=876
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_28-2-2005_pg4_21
Read about poppy eradication here&
http://www.sabawoon.com/newsnew/miniheadlines.asp?dismode=article&artid=21074
Read about how the drop in cultivation is not an isolated ocurrance& .
http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=93475

Opium production is at or near an all-time high.
> Read about British anti-narcotics aid here&
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-02-16-voa55.cfm
Read about USAID livestock initiatives for Afghanis here& .
http://www.usaid.gov/locations/asia_near_east/afghanistan/weeklyreports/022405_report.html

The Taliban might not hold nominal power, but they are far from dead. Powerful, violent, and self-serving  warlords are in control of much of the Afghan countryside.
> “At present, there are hundreds of Afghan diehards who were educated in HIA schools in Peshawar and are ready to sacrifice their lives fighting against US troops in Afghanistan, but there are two issues without which participation in the resistance is near-impossible. A safe sanctuary like Pakistan, from where the Afghan resistance fought against the former USSR, and second, the leadership to organize the fighters from the safe sanctuary and direct them in operations.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GB05Ag02.html

The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is not only porous, but it is a key transit point and haven for some Islamic extremists.
>Afghanis are doing their part to stop these extremist jihadists.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a.h8Pt6FmhJs&refer=top_world_news

The reason that there have been no further terrorist attacks is largely because U.S. citizens including some in the FBI are paying attention now.
>Not sure what point you re attempting to make here. Any proofs to support this hypothesis that citizens are foiling terror plots? I m all for the idea of paying attention and monitoring agencies such as C.A.I.R. and their activities is one good place to start.

It would have been nice if there had been sufficient leadership and vigilance by the incoming Bush administration before 9/11, but the 9/11 commission (watered-down as it was) showed everyone with a brain how unlikely we were to get blood from that particular turnip.

¢’ Interesting how the 9-11 commision is hereby declared  watered down by you, simply because there was no damning information to be found.

In summation, MoveOn.org s petition was prophetic. Afghanistan is a clusterf-ck, and it (along with Iraq) is going to come back to bite us in the ass (again) at some point. When that happens, of course, there will be plenty of people like you around to try and scapegoat the  traitorous leftists . I ll be happy to spit in your eye and remind you that I told you so.

>You re a poor example and you re not informed of the facts. Facts that are inconvenient to your view are dismissed out of hand and you produce fiction without burdening yourself of the need to offer proofs.
You re no equal partner in inquiry here. Your statements are filled with hate and unreason and your last statement says it all.

In Cairo, on February 24 2001, Powell said: “He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.”

(video here)

What changed between the summer of 2001 and the spring of 2003? Nothing, besides 9/11 frightening and angering the (apparent) majority of the U.S. electorate into seeing all foreign Arab types as being of the same evil category, giving the Bushies the political capital to pursue their pre-2000-election desires to remove their erstwhile middleman Saddam, and cowing the bulk of Democratic congressional representation into going along with Bush’s folly.

Was everyone fooled? Hardly. Some people had the guts and the brains to understand that Madeleine Albright was wrong: having the world’s most potent military force isn’t– on its own– reason enough to use it. This is a lesson the Romans never learned, and it is a lesson of which the U.S. electorate needs to be reminded. Looking at the thinning recruitment numbers and the shifting poll numbers, maybe the lesson is sinking in.

I have a suggestion for those of you who think this war is a necessity and that speaking out against it is treason: sign your sorry asses up. Don’t waste another moment at that keyboard extolling the virtues of Dear Leader’s War of Liberation. Put your ass on the line. It doesn’t matter how old you are: if you’re fifty or under, the Guard will take you. If you’re fifty or over, then send your kids. Instead of verbally attacking liberals for their lack of patriotism, do it with your actions. Or maybe you are just a bunch of hypocritical chickensh-ts.

Millions join global anti-war protests

Neglecting Intelligence, Ignoring Warnings
A chronology of how the Bush Administration repeatedly and deliberately refused to listen to intelligence agencies that said its case for war was weak

Let s call it the  Indictment on Terror and send them all to the International Criminal Court. That ll show  em!

We’ve covered this ground. The Bushies may have spread the terrorists around, but they haven’t stopped them. Moreover, they have yet to catch Osama bin Laden. This leads to the next bit of bullsh-t:

I ve friends who served and currently serve. Anytime someone asks  where is Bin Laden of one of them, you don t see a more frustrated look. One man being captured is not the end of the organization, nor of the war on terror.

This is the same chickensh-t excuse spouted by the allegedly tough, no-nonsense Dubya when confronted with his lack of success in getting bin Laden “dead or alive” like he swore he would. At least Dubya didn’t try and hide his pathetic excuse behind the apocryphal fatigues of “soldiers that I know…” You don’t need to construct panty-waste excuses for Dubya; he’ll come up with his own.

This sounds astonishly similar to Dean s stump speech. Do you have some evidence of your claim that jihadists/insurgents are  winning , or do you feel supported by your own acrimonious statements?

Here you’ve made Boneheaded Assumption No. 53. The Iraq quagmire is not necessarily a zero-sum game, and I didn’t say that it is. The insurgents in Iraq know that they can’t ‘defeat’ the U.S. militarily. However, the Bushies have placed the U.S. military in a situation where they are largely unpopular and unwanted, not to mention understaffed and ill-equipped. The insurgents don’t have to win, they just have to inflict enough damage long enough so that enough of the U.S. public will finally wake up to the fact that illegally invading and occupying a sovereign nation– especially without enough troops or an actual plan– was a bad idea that needs to be aborted yesterday. This leads into the final point that I will bother to clarify:

This tired old lefty trope about military service as a requisite for flexing military muscle abroad is so useless and lacking in principle.

Your attempt to build a straw man out of my lovely rhetorical construction fails miserably, of course. There is no “lefty trope” that fits your description. The idea has nothing to with military service being a requisite. It has everything to do with gauging the moral authority of leaders in how they handle potential military entanglements. Clinton, for example, was quick to shoot missiles and drop bombs, but largely proved hesitant to commit ground troops to any situation (judging by his miserable performance in Somalia, that might have been a good idea). The Bushies, to a man, were almost all draft dodgers of one sort or another. They couldn’t wait to send U.S. troops into ill-advised, half-baked foreign adventures; in the case of Iraq, we know just how poorly this can turn out. This isn’t even taking into account that they lied to justify getting the U.S. into Iraq.

Rove overshot the bow, but his comment hit MoveOn.org with precision.
Submitting a petition is precisely what MoveOn.org did. It was a petition imploring the powers that be to  use moderation and restraint in responding to the terrorist attacks against the United States. 

Here you take a different excuse-making tack. Rove wasn’t really wrong, he just wasn’t specific. Bullshit. MoveOn.org’s request for the use of moderation and restraint was not a request for the Bushies to do nothing. The people at MoveOn.org were concerned that the Bushies would fly off the handle and bomb the shit out of scores of innocent people, and carry out heavy-handed policies that would make things worse.

Facts on the ground: the Bushies’ phony puppet Afghan ‘democracy’ has little or no power outside of the Kabul area. Opium production is at or near an all-time high. The Taliban might not hold nominal power, but they are far from dead. Powerful, violent, and self-serving ‘warlords’ are in control of much of the Afghan countryside. The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is not only porous, but it is a key transit point and haven for some Islamic extremists. The reason that there have been no further terrorist attacks is largely because U.S. citizens– including some in the FBI– are paying attention now. It would have been nice if there had been sufficient leadership and vigilance by the incoming Bush administration before 9/11, but the 9/11 commission (watered-down as it was) showed everyone with a brain how unlikely we were to get blood from that particular turnip.

In summation, MoveOn.org’s petition was prophetic. Afghanistan is a clusterf-ck, and it (along with Iraq) is going to come back to bite us in the ass (again) at some point. When that happens, of course, there will be plenty of people like you around to try and scapegoat the ‘traitorous leftists’. I’ll be happy to spit in your eye and remind you that I told you so.

> Let’s call it the “Indictment on Terror” and send them all to the International Criminal Court. That’ll show ‘em!
I’ve friends who served and currently serve. Anytime someone asks “where is Bin Laden” of one of them, you don’t see a more frustrated look. One man being captured is not the end of the organization, nor of the war on terror.

Unfortunately, Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al decided to exploit our national resolve and (temporary) unity in order to go after an irrelevant target: Iraq.

> “We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and
consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to
take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air
and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond
effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to
end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”
- Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl
Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9,
1998

“In the four years since the inspectors left,
intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has
worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons
stock, his missile delivery capability, and his
nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and
sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members.
It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam
Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage
biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying
to develop nuclear weapons.”
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY),Oct 10, 2002

“One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq
the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction
and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom
line.”
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our
purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the
threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
program.”
- President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

“Iraqis a long way from [here], but what happens there
matters a great deal here. For the risks that the
leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or
biological weapons against us or our allies is the
greatest security threat we face.”
- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

“He will use those weapons of mass destruction again,
as he has ten times since 1983.”
- Sandy Berger,Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb,
18, 1998

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of
weapons of mass destruction technology which is a
threat to countries in the region and he has made a
mockery of the weapons inspection process.”
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA),Dec. 16, 1998

“Hussein has … chosen to spend his money on building
weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his
cronies.”
- Madeline Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State,
Nov. 10, 1999

“There is no doubt that … Saddam Hussein has
invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate
that biological, chemical and nuclear programs
continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status.
In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery
systems and is doubtless using the cover of an elicit
missile program to develop longer-range missiles that
will threaten the United States and our allies.”
- Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham
(D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001

“We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein
is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of
the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United
Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction
and the means of delivering them.”
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI),Sept. 19, 2002

“We know that he has stored secret supplies of
biological and chemical weapons throughout his
country.”
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

“Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has
proven impossible to deter and we should assume that
it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.”
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is
seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.”
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA),Sept. 27, 2002

“The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October
of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains
some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons,
and that he has since embarked on a crash course to
build up his chemical and biological warfare
capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is
seeking nuclear weapons…”
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV),Oct. 3, 2002

“I will be voting to give the President of the United
States the authority to use force– if necessary– to
disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly
arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is
a real and grave threat to our security.”
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA),Oct. 9, 2002

“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is
working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and
will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five
years … We also should remember we have always
underestimated the progress Saddam has made in
development of weapons of mass destruction.”
- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV),Oct 10, 2002

“He has systematically violated, over the course of
the past 11years, every significant UN resolution that
has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical
and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This
he has refused to do”
- Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA),Oct. 10, 2002

“We are in possession of what I think to be
compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has
had for a number of years, a developing capacity for
the production and storage of weapons of mass
destruction.”
- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL),Dec. 8, 2002

“Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein.
He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an
oppressive regime … He presents a particularly
grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to
miscalculation … And now he is miscalculating
America’s response to his continued deceit and his
consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction… So
the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass
destruction is real…”
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

So much for serving the standing warrant on bin Laden.

>The United States has not confined terrorists to a status outside the law. The Laws of War, which are older than the U.S., apply. The terrorists are not entitled to protections, UNDER those very laws of war, because they do not comply with them. Granting them legal protections would thus reward them for mass murdering civilians, targeting civilian infrastructure, not wearing uniforms or carrying their arms openly, etc.

Laughing at Dean for reflexively holding up our nation s highest ideals is an action befitting a pinheaded fascist bootlicker.

>Ad hominem attacks like that are a feature of liberalism’s basic hostility to reason.

I didn t vote for Dean in the Democratic primary in 2004, but I ll take a thousand of him before I bother to piss on the likes of Bush, Cheney, and Rove. Those assholes have us mired in an unwinnable war in Iraq, one that has become a training ground for a new generation of anti-U.S. terrorists.

> This sounds astonishly similar to Dean’s stump speech. Do you have some evidence of your claim that jihadists/insurgents are “winning”, or do you feel supported by your own acrimonious statements?

These cowards all dodged military service when they had the chance to serve in uniform, so maybe it s no wonder they don t have the balls to ask their constituents (especially those brave young College Republicans) to help shore up the perilously overstretched ranks of our fighting forces.

> This tired old lefty trope about military service as a requisite for flexing military muscle abroad is so useless and lacking in principle. In your view, Abraham Lincoln and Alexander Hamilton were “chickenhawks”.

Meanwhile, Karl Rove has the gall to come out and call liberals (many of whom are over in Iraq risking their asses as we speak) the enemy, and people like Jon Henke want to set up some false moral equivalency between that kind of talk and righteous (if occasionally misdirected) liberal and progressive anger.

>Yes, Rove overshot the bow, but his comment hit MoveOn.org with precision.
Submitting a petition is precisely what MoveOn.org did. It was a petition imploring the powers that be to ‘use moderation and restraint in responding to the terrorist attacks against the United States.’ “

This is the sort of inverted reasoning that only the mentally slow will buy. In the days following 9/11, even perennial jackals like Tom DeLay waxed enthusiastic about the unity and resolve of U.S. citizens behind the cause of going after the perpetrators and planners of the attacks. See, the idea for some of us was that the Bushies’ mighty crusading army would bring bin Laden and his cohorts in to face justice. They would be put on trial to face charges in a court of law, because that is what we here in the civilized U.S. do– unlike those who fly planes into buildings in order to seek ‘justice’. This all depended, of course, upon our fearless leaders actually catching bin Laden.

Unfortunately, Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al decided to exploit our national resolve and (temporary) unity in order to go after an irrelevant target: Iraq. So much for serving the standing warrant on bin Laden. Laughing at Dean for reflexively holding up our nation’s highest ideals is an action befitting a pinheaded fascist bootlicker. I didn’t vote for Dean in the Democratic primary in 2004, but I’ll take a thousand of him before I bother to piss on the likes of Bush, Cheney, and Rove. Those assholes have us mired in an unwinnable war in Iraq, one that has become a training ground for a new generation of anti-U.S. terrorists.

These cowards all dodged military service when they had the chance to serve in uniform, so maybe it’s no wonder they don’t have the balls to ask their constituents (especially those brave young College Republicans) to help shore up the perilously overstretched ranks of our fighting forces.

Meanwhile, Karl Rove has the gall to come out and call liberals (many of whom are over in Iraq risking their asses as we speak) the enemy, and people like Jon Henke want to set up some false moral equivalency between that kind of talk and righteous (if occasionally misdirected) liberal and progressive anger.

“Yargh! Avast ye lubbers! Heave to and hoist sails to jihad! As Allah be me witness, we’ll leave no stone atop another, and there’ll be plenty of booty for all! Ahoy!”

-Terrorism already is a crime in most civilized states. Moreover, the U.S., like many countries, has very expansive extra-territorial jurisdiction mechanisms for bring terrorists and other international “criminals” to trial. Nevertheless, “the Dread Pirate bin Laden” referred to by Douglas Burgess has been under indictment in the U.S. since the spring of 1998 — i.e., BEFORE the embassy bombings, BEFORE the Cole bombing, and BEFORE 9/11. He, shall we say, remains a fugitive. This is why, for instance, then-Democratic Party presidential hopeful, Howard Dean, fully two years AFTER the 9/11 attacks, had the opportunity to assert that he could not render an opinion regarding what should be done about bin Laden since, in his view, it would be irresponsible “to prejudge jury trials.” Dean has since been chosen Chairman of the Democratic Party, many of whose heavyweights last week expressed outrage at the suggestion by Carl Rove that, after the 9/11 attacks, liberals wanted to respond to al Qaeda by filing indictments.

Well, here’s a quick “google news” survey:

search terms “civil action program” +Iraq

results = 1

search terms “civil action program” +mil (web, military sources only)

results = 120

search terms “casualties” Iraq in Google News

results = 7690

Still want to talk about balance?

However, if I report that 25 people die in car bomb attacks in Iraq, it doesn’t need to be balanced. This is reporting.

This is what has happened, we allow pundits to “balance” news reporting and muddy every single event. The people see everything as subject to interpretation and bow out of the debate process.

Well, he pretty much nailed you for being a hypocrite, Oliver. Not like he’s the only one, either…

The idiocy is in mistaking a debate about the tone of rhetoric for a debate about actual issues. OW’s rhetoric is just as partisan as those of his opponents. OK, so what? I personally find his rhetoric a lot less obnoxious– he doesn’t call his opponents traitors, for example– but that’s besides my point.

A debate about whose tone of debate is more civil is a huge waste of time, adds no information, and just adds to the noise– much as a long discussion thread about how much SPAM is on a mailing list quickly dwarfs the actual number of SPAM messages on the list.

I too wish the debate about issues was more substantive. But partisan streetfighting is today’s reality. Now, when will Bush be impeached for lying to us about the war? When will we pull our troops out of Iraq? When will the college republicans launch a military recruiting drive to boost sagging enlistments? When will Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham be indicted? When will the Bush tax subsidies for the super-rich be repealed? When will the oil companies be kicked off of K street and a serious national investment in conservation and alternative energy be launched? When will single-payer medical insurance be instituted? When will religious dogma and pseudo-science be booted out of our classrooms? I find these to be much more interesting– and more productive– questions to ponder.