I have had the same feeling as Glenn for some time that there is a momentum building in the congress, media and electorate that can't be stopped and that will have implications and consequences far beyond Watergate or anything we have ever seen in the history of our presidential administrations.

Bill Moyer's outstanding PBS journal on how the media failed us may not have hit the nation and the media with full force yet, but it will. Those media who are still journalists at heart and who have not had their souls bought by corporate influence, have felt sick in their hearts for the role they did not play in the build up to the war. They will now feel safe enough to come out, fess up and attack. It is no longer in the hands of the bloggers and few brave media who were largely ignored.

George Tenet's book is a smoking gun even though it apparently does not contain a wow blockbuster fact. It ties together the role played by the American Enterprise Institute, Feith and Rumsfeld, self-serving ex-Iraqi-patriates, weak (or skirted around) state department and national security advisors, a politically blunted, short-circuited intelligence apparatus and most of all Darth Cheney. Somehow Tenet remains loyal to Bush. Maybe the puppet Decision-Maker tried to do the right thing. To me, he is deeply flawed by psychological insecurities that made him very vulnerable. He became our president and the buck stops with him. He will now be held fully accountable before he leaves office, not after.

The Dark One and other Neocons took full advantage and we should be totally outraged. We are. Some Americans just haven't taken that feeling from their gut to their brain yet. Mark Glenn’s words. History will. Our brave, dedicated military deserve no less.

Once again Gary Kamiya is right on his game. It is a sick political game that the top GOP leadership play. A game that many of these Rove acolytes have been too successful with for far too long. I try hard to not feel malice, only pity. Not one to hold back his emotions, it is hard for me as a retired Air Force Lt. Col., when I think of the price we have all paid and continue to pay. The trap, that Kamiya points out, that these people have put themselves in, is very hard to dig out of because you feel very dirty and then have to look down at the deep hole you have dug. This is the same psychological trap that the Neocons have put our brave military in, only their hole is not only deep, but filled with corpses and maimed comrades. The view for Iraqis is hard to even fathom.

Regardless of your political views, we need to hold those who continue to use such salacious tactics accountable and try to convince our friends why such tactics for purely political gain are what is unAmerican and unpatriotic.

During Vietnam the deserters were drafted and had not volunteered. That makes deserting to Canada a more difficult decision for everyone. Having to return for the third or fourth time to the mental tortures of Iraq would test anyone. Therefore, I don't think I have any real basis for judging their personal decision. However, they have to be willing to accept the consequences of that decision.

While I don’t have a problem with Glenn’s premise that Beltway pundits can’t truly represent what Americans think and that there is a lot of corruption in Washington that slants their reporting, I do have some concern with what Glenn seems to saying between the lines. The message is that we should dismiss all of inside the beltway reporting because they are too corrupted by the system to be relevant. I say that because I do not see Glenn offer any solutions to the problem he poses other than for us on the outside to fully see them for who they are. As a blogger from Chicago, let me succinctly defend the beltway pundits- WE NEED THEM.

Yes they do distort, mislead, ignore, misquote and support political spinning. But at other times, they reveal, provide missing facts, challenge conventional thinking, and support those who aren’t being heard. We outside-the-beltway critics, should consider what our world would be like if these inside-the –beltway pundits weren’t working within this despised system. What would our blogging be like?

The same can be said for our criticism of our legislators. With our two-party system, we watch a show that is very much like a courtroom. The two sides overstate their defense or prosecution side and then the jury or judge tries to find a fair outcome. If the legislators or inside-the-beltway pundits from the right and left didn’t give us their side, how would we decide our conclusions? If any of us had to work within the system, would we be any different than those we so eagerly impugn?

What I would rather see us do on the outside is harken to the days when we had journalists and legislators that had a moral compass pegged on our constitution and democracy and made a decision together, (that is called compromise for those who are too young to remember) so that there would be a win-win outcome for all of us. That is what we should demand of those inside the beltway. We should keep that goal in mind when we do our very important and often enjoyable criticizing.