Call me a liberal elitist in my decadent coastal enclave, but if you ask me being smart is a good quality in a president. Disordered speech is a sign of a disordered mind, and Bush's mind is burying the needle on the entropy meter.

Hey wingnuts: can you do the world a favor and from now on please only nominate for president wingnuts with triple-digit IQ's?

"Between March and July 2003, he says, he was taken to four sites in southern Iraq -- two within Nasariyah, one 20 miles south and one near Basra -- which, he was told by numerous Iraqi sources, contained biological and chemical weapons, material for a nuclear programme and UN-proscribed missiles. He was, he says, in no doubt whatever that this was true. . . . "

Based on what I have read here, this conspiracy theory is based entirely on hearsay evidence from a single source who, in turn, also bases his claims entirely on hearsay evidence from a small number of sources.

In Republican epistemology this is what is known as "metaphysical certainty".

"Could there really be any more than 1 or 2 percent of the population that believes WMDs *were* found in Iraq, but both Bush and the Democrats want this "fact" hidden to avoid embarrassment?"

I'm not sure about the Bush and the Dems hiding the fact part, but as recently as July of last year 50% of Americans still believed Iraq had WMD when we invaded. Think about that.

That is how successful Republican propaganda is. That is how dangerous this new conpsiracy theory is.

It's The Lying, Stupid. We have to make Republican lies a central focus of our attack on the Republican party. As long as they can lie and get away with it, they will never be stopped.

What else is amazing about our lame courtier media is the fact that they have been totally outclassed by the comedians -- when it comes to substance!.

Its amazing but true that you would have been far more likely to have an accurate and complete grasp on the true nature of what has been going on for the last 6 years if you had only watched Colbert and Stewart and read Tom Tomorrow than if you only watched network news (certainly FOX news) and even if you had only read the newspapers. And its not just that you would have avoided the propaganda and the bias and the he-said she said stenography and the rest, but the comedians' analysis of the politics is better than that of the media talking heads and even than many Democratic political strategists.

George v. George

George McGovern: war hero and patriot

George Bush: draft dodger and parasite

Journalists should protect their sources, but why the hell should they feel obligated to protect sources who lie to them? The MSM need to reexamine this policy of protecting liars. If they don't, then they have consented to being channels for government propaganda.

Through work and on blogs I've had occasion to interact with a number of national journalists and, almost without exception, they were fat-headed, self-deluded, irresponsible douchebags. Many of them revealed a surprising inability to grapple with even moderately complex policy questions.

I have a theory about this. Journalists are insecure because they're not exceptionally smart and they know it. That's why they're so defensive. After all, these boys and girls went to journalism school, not law school, not medical school, and not grad school in a real field in which they developed real expertise. Their primary skill is the ability to write -- a skill which most people who do graduate work at good schools also have.

Glenn said, "There are certain people who rub me the wrong way to such an extreme degree that I actually try not to write about them because I feel like the aniums they provoke will be impossible to contain. For me, Peter Beinart is one such individual."

I'm a little less restrained then Glenn, so I'll just say it. Peter Beinart is a cowardly little weasel of a media whore and a punk. He's much worse than a sociopath.

It was bad enough that his sorry-ass lack of judgment led him to be 100% wrong about the most important issue of our time. What's much worse is, not only did he not learn from his pathetic mistakes, his response was to advocate the purging from the Democratic party of the liberals who were right and who had the courage to speak truth to power, while he licked power's boot.

Media whore to the core.

DCLAW1 said, "I don't care for a second what the ideological predisposition of a news source is, if I am confident that it is being intellectually, factually, and morally honest and thorough."

Exactly. I could handle a Fox News if it was honest.

This is really the core problem of our political system. The body politic has been infected with anti-American liars with no real political principles. Until we hold the liars and their media whore enablers accountable for their lies, they will not be stopped. And I blame the media whore who uncritically passes on the obvious lie just as much as the person they quote. If you allow yourself to be used by liars, then you are a liar too. That means you, Peter Beinart.