First, regarding one commenter who noted that she liked reading the article comments better than table talk: I concur, and I think a lot of it has to do with intuitiveness of the site layout(not so good for tabletalk, better for reader's comments)as well as the effort required to plow through the site to read what you want.

None of us(in readerland) have to read Salon, so we're not going to try that hard, especially since often the topic mentioned at Tabletalk on Salon's homepage is not on top when you click through, so people give up looking for it and (I'm guessing) dismiss Tabletalk altogether thereafter. ( Slate's comments are unusually bothersome to navigate as well, and I've since given up on reading them.) But Salon's are located exactly where you'd want them to be, at the end of the article, reminding me of P.T. Barnum's "this way to the egress" signs that were designed to keep traffic moving, or in this case to catch you just while things are percolating in your noggin.

I read Salon fairly regularly but have never seen anything posted asking participants of the article comments how they think the reader's comments might be improved. Maybe subsribers who agree to receive email bulletins have been surveyed-- I wouldn't know, having grown leery of agreeing to receive email bulletins since so many organizations inundate people with them, so I just say no, even if I trust company x with my demographic info, just because it seems like another unneccessary thing that sucks time out of my life. I imagine a lot of people feel that way who participate in the comments, but might respond to a simple colorful clickable jpeg box, say 180x180 or so, temporarily located at the upper left under "letters help" asking readers to participate(with a clear deadline stated, for the more pokey among us.)

And no, I'm not saying you owe it to yourselves to solicit readers' opinions, but you might be surprised at the input.

Kamiya talks about the wide variation in civility in peoples' letters, and sounds a bit ambivelant, as if he'd like to discourage the ruder parties without making this an autocratic(or at least schoolmarmish) internet venue. I know that when I look at comments I've made, there were a few that I've left that I've wished I could take back or at least edit to make them somewhat more diplomatic. Somehow I doubt I'm the only person thinking this sort of thing.

What about software that generates a random code(like the real-person verification stuff) that would be good, say, for half an hour that would allow commenters to edit, and leave behind a "deleted by commenter" entry, or a "edited by commenter" tag? I believe I've seen something like this elsewhere.

(Nothing magical about half an hour-- it just occurs to me that it would need to be a relatively brief time frame otherwise some people who got into discussions with others would go back and substantially change their arguments in order to make others criticizing them look foolish. Passive-agressive squirreliness, as it were. I don't even know if that's a word, but I won't edit it. 10 minutes? five?)

Sorry, I don't think so.

Maybe Perlstein didn't choose the title; naturally, I have no way of knowing if this is so. However, it's pretty clear to me that this article is less about saving soldiers' lives than saving the democrats' bacon.

Although I've been a democrat since 1984, I care more about getting the US out of Iraq and stopping the needless bloodshed than whether or not the democrats look good. Whether Perlstein can see it or not, the only way to get the US out of Iraq is to impeach Junior, and this will only be politically viable if the GOP are seen as part of the solution, as their help is needed in this.

Realistically, the GOP will prevent the end of the war if it makes them look bad, but potentially enough republicans will help impeach Bush if it is presented as a truly bipartisan effort rather than an effort to make the other guys look bad. People who might find this distasteful need to ask themselves: do I care more about ending this foul and immoral war or the democrats' prospects in 2008?

geez, why do people worry so much about this president's hurt feelings? why are they more important than the lives and countries he destroys?

If he's ever found to be the war criminal he is, will we ask Bill Gates to move out of his mansion so that Junior can be housed in a suitably august prison?