I’m away, and without steady access to the internets, but I wanted to add something to the bizarre little dustup a few posts below.

Since we have a new contender bucking for Jim C’s seat at the table, I want to address this misdirected, pathetic little rant lest this get out of hand:

In other words, no matter what we do, you’re going to be opposed to it, and you’re going to see it in a negative light. You disgust me. You’re no better than the most base, racist, uneducated hick, who judges others based on pre-conceived notions and refuses to even acknowledge the possibility that he may be wrong. You are everything that I loathe in the human race.

The name-calling was unfounded and unacceptable. If you have anger issues, I suggest hitting the gym. Sarabeth showed remarkable restraint in overlooking that foolishness, I won’t.

We’ve seen the substantive(?) argument before: You can’t criticize the President or his administration or the military or the Iraqis or anyone else for the Iraq clusterfuck because:

a) we’re in it and failure is not an option
and/or
b) you can only criticize if you have the magic wand that make everything all good

In a word, no. I and many like-minded people on both sides of the aisle wrote many things before and during the war designed to call attention to things that needed to change so that the present situation might be avoided. In every way, these suggestions were ignored in favor of political expediency, ideology, negligence, and gross incompetence.

I suggested patience in order to build a real coalition, rather than alienating our allies. I suggested using a conventional-sized force rather than Donald Rumsfeld‘s wet dream of a “lighter, faster fighting force.” I suggested sealing the borders rather than leaving them wide open in order to later blame a phantom foreign insurgency. I suggested opening up reconstruction contracts and peacekeeping to nations that didn’t necessarily participate in the “liberation” so that the burden could be shared instead of allowing Halliburton to steal taxpayer funds with impunity. I suggested setting up a more realistic roadmap to an Iraqi government in place of the system of artificial deadlines and unwarranted favoritism.

Anyone who expects me (or really anyone who sees the war as an abject failure) to sit on my hands and bite my tongue because I don’t have the magic beans is deluded. Anyone who expects me to believe a word this administration says on anything simply hasn’t been paying attention over the last several years. Anyone who expects the President’s political opponents to pass up the opportunity to use his incompetence against his supporters in Congress is clueless. For one of those people to then come in here and insult one of our writers and whine about our negative viewpoint isn’t going to fly. Period.

As Matt Tobey said, the puppy’s dead. That’s just how it is.