I didn't see the debate, but I read an item in the LA Times, which discussed the Gravel-Obama exchange, thusly:

The format for the 90-minute debate allowed each candidate a total of 11 minutes to talk — giving Kucinich and Gravel, both of whom have a negligible showing in polls, equal time with the front-runners, which they used to take aggressive hits at Clinton and Obama.

The dynamic produced at least one memorable exchange, in which Gravel knocked Obama for saying he would not rule out any options in responding to Iran's nuclear program.

"Who the hell are we going to nuke? Tell me, Barack," Gravel said.

"I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike. I promise," Obama said, his words muffled by audience laughter.

Obama will get credit for disavowing his previous comment that "all options are on the table", while also being able to finesse his position in suggesting he was just joking, and is "just as tough as ever" in his stance towards Iran-- and undoubtedly he will do so shortly. Call it gestalt politicking.

But you are wrong, Mr Shapiro, to dismiss Kucinich and Gravel as mere protest candidates. Do you want to be one of those people who cavalierly frame our political debate the way a Maureen Dowd or a Chris Matthews would? I suggest to you that millions of Americans are scared ***tless by the nonchalance with which the major presidential candidates discuss a possible war with Iran, but most of them either

1.don't support Kucinich or Gravel because they don't think they have a chance, partly because fancypants journalists tell them so,

2.or they haven't even heard of them, in part because of the afore-mentioned fancypants journalists, who can't be bothered less they seem uncool for engaging in unseemly thoroughness.

In the meantime, the democrats who meekly supported war in 2002 appear unwilling to learn any lessons from our recent past. Gravel spoke up. Good for him.

I'd like to note that beheadings didn't start happening in Irq until after news of Abu Ghraib broke. What happened to Nick Berg, roughly 3 weeks after the first photos were made public, was genuinely horrible. Nevertheless, the news delivered around the world was just the period to a sentence:

When the Abu Ghraib scandal first made news, many right-wing commentators here said that they shouldn't have revealed the photos, because they would only embolden the enemy, and result in retaliation. They were only half-right-- don't you think, as communities received their sons back, psychologically and physically scarred, bloodied and broken-- or dead-- that they knew? The pictures only served as confirmation.

The way you prevent "them" from doing horrible things to us and ours is by not doing horrible things to them in the first place, whether directly or through proxies like Israel or Pakistan.

I didn't hear the sound clip, but maybe he said "I'm Commander Guy." Perhaps he thinks he's a super-hero, and his suit has tights to go with the gold shoulder thingies(as I imagine he'd call them)that someone else mentioned.

Of course, he's not a very good super-hero, but that's quite another matter.

"They faced an audience of several hundred, divided into three sections, each one named for the site of a Reagan summit with the Soviets. The network executives sat in Moscow. The journalists and VIPs sat in Reykjavik. Most of the candidate families and friends sat in Geneva."

1. the Journalists and the VIPs aren't good enough to sit in Reykjavik. Terre Haute or Buffalo, maybe. And wouldn't it be nice if we could ship all the network bigwigs to Moscow, and force the Idahoans to keep them?

2.What, no normal people?

2b. Oh, that's right, we're talking about the republicans. They don't bother to pretend.

3. I thought it was interesting that they asked about who didn't believe in evolution in an oblique long shot, making it difficult for the viewer to tell who raised their hands. It was as if NBC was trying to protect the candidates from the consequences of their own nuttiness. Quite a contrast from the baiting that Brian Williams offered to the democrats, daring them to not denounce the "traiterous" Harry Reid.

1.The WaPo version of the black sheep anecdote doesn't make the least bit of sense. Why would "Bar" need to instruct the queen not to answer Junior? Surely she could be counted on to have sufficient good sense and reserve without any special pleading from our queen mother.

The version I've heard has Bush,jr making a supposedly clever comment met with silence, then adding nervously, "I guess I've always been regarded as the black sheep in my family," with the Queen responding by asking him if he agreed with his family's assessment, and him shooting back, "I guess so, who's yours?" At which point the queen, angered at being set up like that, simply excused herself and walked away.

2.Although I'm no great fan of the concept of royalty, especially disliking the American version, I think this comment is completely unwarranted:

"Actually Dubya and the Queen are a good match. American Royalty and British Royalty. An ignorant, obnoxious, unread American and an arrogant, worthless, inbred Brit."

Elizabeth pleaded with her father the king to let her join the Royal Army in 1945 where she became a driver, at a time when the idea of ordinary women serving even an auxillary military function still seemed novel, let alone a royal. By contrast, we all know about Junior's military service.