@ Elephantman

(I favored the removal of Saddam based on Iraq's unrelenting targeting of, and resistnace to, our defense of the Northern and Southern No-Fly Zones. If you target an American warplane, in my view, and keep doing it for ten years, it is an act of war.)

So we fly planes over someone else's territory, under the rubric of a unilaterally imposed "no-fly zone", and we provoke the defences over the rest of the country with incursions, send in a HARM when they dare to turn on their radars, send in cruise missiles every once in a while just to remind them what bad-asses we are, and complain about the few occasions when they take ineffectual pot-shots at us?!?!?

Not a single plane was lost to Iraqi AAD, not a single pilot killed. How's that "unrelenting targeting of, and resistance to, our defence of the [no-fly zones]"?

Talk about a "Knock this chip off my shoulder. I dare you...."

Then there was that ill-conceived plot to paint up a U-2 with UN markings and try to get it shot down to provoke a casus bellum. You're an eedjit, Dumbo ... or a dissembler ... or most probably both.

Cheers,

-- Arne Langsetmo

Yeah. We dictated those terms for Iraq's surrender in the first Gulf War. They should have respected them. We did it to prevent genocides in those regions.

And even if your name is Arne Langestemo, if I were flying an F-15, and you targeted me with AAA radar, yes, I'd push the button to incinerate you.

I honestly don't know...

I want to thank the headline writers at Salon for setting this one up. No title, not even a sarcastic/imitative one, could possibly be as good as, and as descriptive as, "A New Low for Conason." Which is really saying quite a lot.

When Joe Conason says something, and says it forcefully, you pretty much know that it is loaded. Either with his own partisan venom, or some untruth. In this case, both.

For, as much as Joe Conason might have wanted Rudy Giuliani to have predicted that a Democrat in the White House would mean more 9/11's, it just isn't true:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009991

What is kind of shocking is that whatever echo chamber Joe Conason lives in, he clearly didn't get around to reading yesterday's online OpinionJournal.com expose' on this fabulist "news" report of Giuliani's comments. Joe Conason isn't merely a bomb-throwing political hack, he's an uninformed bomb-throwing political hack. Isn't there any adult editorial supervision for Joe Conason at Salon?

I just got through looking some more at the long thread discussing the Bill Moyers show on PBS. And the Salonistas were mostly unified in praising good, factual journalism over all. They didn't care that Moyers was a left-leaning partisan. What made Moyers better than Fox, was his careful attention to journalism standards. Or so it was said. So where does Joe "the Hit Man" Conason fit into that view of journalism?

Reading Joe Conason on-line makes me want to wash my hands after touching the keyboard.

Let's see...

Giuliani is a former U.S. Attorney... (that's the new idenitity politics group of choice now, right?)

He favors a woman's right to privacy in abortion law...

He is a lifelong New Yorker, who did much to make the city what it is now, in terms of stable finances and reduced crime...

He is something more than a mere moderate on gay rights...

He's been humorous and self-effacing on SNL...

And so the reason that he comes in for special, unusual, extreme hatred and hate-speech at Salon is -- what? The fact that he could be President? Or is this all not really any unusual level of hate-speech for the Salonistas? Is it their standard way of addressing Republicans? Should we understand that Republicans are to Salonistas as blacks are to Klansmen and Jews are to the Nazis (and now, Hamas...)?

Hey, I think you just converted me to the Democrat party! Gasoline is going to be cheaper under the Democrats?