Again, apologies to anyone if I'm restating points already made. I'm bulleting these for the sake of myself it helps me think)

1. If I recall correctly, there is also an a section of Into The Buzzsaw which is written by Banfield that is also worth reading. The book was edited by Kristina Borjesson, the same woman who edited the excellent and invaluable Feet to the Fire.

2. In the political sea change post below Glenn touched on the kind of slow awakening in America that we've been been living in a haze of lies for a while now. I think that it is imperative to keep chugging foward and systematically dismantle all the bullshit that this movement has tried to bury us with.

Along those lines, I heard an interesting discussion on NPR today which noted that terrorist activity is up 25% over the last two years, and that there is an article in Foreign Affairs from a terrorist expert saying that al Qaeda is now as strong as its ever been, or at least since 9/11. The guests on the program made the point that in the battle of ideas, Osama is winning because the US invasion of IRaq was like a dream come true for him.

It allows al Qaeda to steadily and slowly wear down our military forces while using our occupation of an oil rich Arab state as propaganda to unite and radicalize the Muslim world against the U.S.A.

The utter hubris and idiocy demonstrated by this administration is that they have fallen into the same trap that the mujahadeen (that our CIA trained) laid for the Soviets in Afghanitan.

This should be a key focus of the press, if the press did what the press was given a 1st amendment privelege to do: the Bush administration has made the threat of terrorism worse.

3. On Tenet. I'm glad that Tenet came out with his book for the sake of Americans having a better grasp of the truth, but what bothers me (to the point of being irate) is that he is doing so for vindicative reasons ... he doesn't appreaciate being used as a scapegoat. But he was complicit in getting the USA into the most disastrous foreign military adventure in its history. He wasn't speaking up while the USA and the world was being lied into a war of choice and aggression.

A few months ago Daniel Ellsburg wrote an op-ed (I forget where) where he mused about how Richard Clarke might have better served his country if he had revealed what he revealed in his book while he was living through it ... while his whistle-blowing would have had a chance to make a difference. Ellsburg's ultimate point was to encourage anyone (and he was sure someone) in gov't new that the administration was plotting war with Iran and that they should speak up now.

Tenet should have resigned. He should have told the country what the administration was trying to do. Same with Colin Powell.

I would like to say that they betrayed the American people. But I can't, I'm not a mind-reader. I don't know if they thought what they were doing was right, or if they didn't have the courage to speak out. Joseph Conrad said that all a man can betray is his conscience.

That's a question I would put to Tenet or Powell ... men who knew that the administation was full of shit but helped sell it to us, helped Bush and Cheney and Rumsfield and Wolfowitz and Rice shovel it ... "Sirs, did you betray your conscience?"

I will have to apologize again, since I did not read all the comments but believe I skimmed enought to get the gist of what people were saying about the remaining % of Bush supporters.

Several things to keep in mind:

1. Money is the most dominant factor in politics now. The next election with be our nation's first billion dollar one. The people count, yes, but dollars matter more. And it just so happens that the people with the most dollars tend to be the ones that are the least concerned with the interests of democracy.

2. The Religious Right (the dominionist RR) is a minority of this country, but it has seized the Republican party, and is extremely adept at grassroots campaigning.

3. The people with the money are allies with the people who control the religious nuts.

4. The noise machine isn't going away, and given enough time, the same propaganda it used before will work again. Here's the plot: revise history to blame Iraq it on "the left", say "the left" are communists/terrorist appeasers, say "the left" are soft on terrorism.

5. The media is structured to give the advantage to the noise machine.

This just means we've got our work cut out for us.

Powell and Tenet are clearly not sociopaths. If they were sociopaths I would not be mad at them. How could I be? Sharks can't help that they're sharks, sociopaths can't help that they're sociopaths.

But these are men who are capable of making moral judgements. This is what allows me to be upset with them, they should have known better. They should have done better.