In response to Guy’s previous point, maybe the Times reported an inaccuracy when the reporter’s described this program as a “closely held secret.” If that is true, then the Times ought to do journalistic due diligence and print a correction, or at least a clarification as to why their sources were calling this story a closely held secret.

I read some other letter writers pissing all over her prose and her points, but (speaking as someone who actually pays to be a member of this site) I'd like to see Salon give Bauer more assignments and publish more of her work.

I was informed and entertained about a topic I wasn't even interested in. I say this at great risk of being flamed with zippy one-liners.

Thank you for doing your job, something I wouldn't say to many at the Times. Think they'll print a correction?

Theretheygoagain's previous letter is an assertion substantiated by nothing. What evidence do you have that "the Left" is out to get Lieberman for his open religiousness, other than your fear and mistrust of liberals?

A secret conspiracy of secular liberals to undo a man of virtue...Sounds like a Republican script to me.

I can fault Xanthro for starting with inaacurate assumptions. Most Demos aren’t opposed to Lieberman in pursuit of purity. There are progressive public servants across the party and the country that hold many positions that aren’t “pure.”

The problem with Lieberman is that he is off the charts in his near feudal support of Bush, and he has been more than willing to attack other Democrats and undermine the party whenever it tries to present an organized front against Bush Co. Lieberman is an agent of incoherence in the Democratic party on an order of magnitude with Zell Miller.

And to say that Lieberman is “far too liberal to be accepted in a great part of the United States” is absurd. First, I don’t accept your embedded assumption where the word “great” implies that we are so few and they are so many—People resent liberals for not having backbone and the courage of their convictions. And second, let’s not forget that Lieberman is, after all, the house liberal on Fox News, which makes him the palatable liberal (closet Republican) in many of those not-so-great-but-well-represented areas of the country you are referencing.

I get the sense I’m hearing something similar to what we heard here in America after 9/11. This attack is so different that no rules apply, or in the words of Dick Cheney, “we have to take off the gloves, go to the dark side.”

And in the assertion that this war is most like Israel’s war of independence I hear echos of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum trying to convince Americans that we are now fighting WWIII.

After having lived through 9/11 in the United States and all that came after with our own homegrown conservative authoritarians, who would have thought I would have come out on the far side with less sympathy for righteous violent defenders, not more.

My liberal values would be best expressed if there were a leader in America right now like former liberal Democratic senator George Mitchell, who went to Northern Ireland and helped broker the Belfast Peace Agreement in 1998. Someone who would use the great power of this nation and our liberal traditions to halt the destruction that will only lead to a cycle of more destruction.

Of course, Israel has a right to defend itself, but reverting Lebanon into a failed state is disproportionate, grossly immoral and will ultimately make Israelis less safe.

(Some) US liberals are stridently criticizing Israel because more violence, more victimized refugees and more war crimes against civilians are ultimately as bad for Israel as everybody else. We’d like to see an endgame to the conflict in the Middle East that is good for Israel too. Your accusation that the criticism comes of ill will and anti-Semitism is ad-hominen and insulting.

I'm disappointed to see the reporter responding here in the letters section. He should just focus on giving as accurate a report as possible of what's going on and not get caught up in the push and pull of the letter writers. The worse censorship is self-censorship, and I wouldn't want Prothero to be affected in his reporting.

I anticipate that reporters in a war zone will be affected in their reporting by the "fog of war," and I keep that in mind as I assimulate Prothero's observations into what I think I know about this conflict. I appreciate that Salon is giving us unideologically digested reports where all the contratdictions of the observations haven't been "tidied up." Because of that, Prothero's reporting rings truer and I found myself thinking about this story longer.

Unfortunately, the "fog of war" also makes war reporting an easy target for ideologues with a political axe to grind.

I especially appreciated his reporting in this article about how Israel has a tougher time gathering intelligence about Hizbollah than the Palestinian groups. It's readily apparent to me, even from this distance, that there is something about Hizbollah operationally that makes it more dangerous battlefield foe to Israel than Hamas.