They made their intentions pretty clear but for some reason nobody talks about it, even today, as we are debating the possible consequences of a withdrawal from Iraq. I've never understood why.

The reason is not very complicated: because they tell you not to.

Most Americans, even liberal bloggers, are deeply uneasy about any departure from the dominant terms of national discourse. If government officials utter some absurd pronouncement that flies in the face of reason and decency, we would still rather burn column inches debating it and picking it apart than simply reject it out of hand and start discussing the truth.

When critical-minded Americans stop clinging to their fantasy that the debate over US policy in Iraq (to pick one example) is between reasonable parties making sincere assertions and articulating reasonable disagreements, then we can begin to create a competing, reality-based discourse. After far too long this is starting to happen, finally, but to the extent that we have not yet learned to wean ourselves, we are still dancing to the tune Karl Rove plays for us.

The US military has been busy as bees for 5 years now building a series of massive, isolated, permanent bases in the Iraqi desert. We are not building them with the expectation of leaving them a few months from now. Any discussion of American withdrawal has to begin and end there -- not with the headlines of the day, or the latest batch of lies and distractions to come out of the White House.

Consider the theater of false choices presented to us. Democrats say withdraw now, Republicans say withdraw after the 2008 elections, and we wait with bated breath for the White House response -- will Bush signal a willingness to budge? Will he maintain his foolhardy resolve?

While we're all tuning in to the thrilling suspense, or checking the latest buzz on the blogs, any debate over our actual policy and its actual consequences has been neatly -- and largely with the consent of would-be critics -- strangled in its crib.

Sure there have been plenty of protests over the Iraq war, but they aren't the same as those over viet Nam...

There were massive protests all across the United States during the long, blatantly obvious run-up to the US invasion of Iraq, during which many "reasonable" Americans continued to somnolently debate the straw man of where Bush should draw the line, etc, and pooh-pooh the protesters as being out of touch and unwilling to discuss things reasonably.

Almost no mainstream print papers in the US covered these protests, even local papers covering protests within their own cities, and apparently it worked -- now, 5 years later, the myth of no mass protest has become gospel even for some Salon readers.

And why not? At the time, even Salon's then-political analyst declared the marches and protests insignificant, counterproductive, and anachronistic. I guess you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

As for "Hardball," anyone who debates the reasons why there were no mass protests of the Iraq war is essentially insane, and anything they say out loud should not be taken seriously until they can prove that they've recovered their faculties.

In fact I probably shouldn't be wasting any more time writing about "Hardball," nor you reading it!

It's 2007 and everyone is up in arms about impeachment now?

The time to impeach Bush was 7 years ago when he took office extraconstitutionally. None of you were nearly this outraged about it then -- not even close. Why should you expect your legislators to suddenly jump to attention now, at the last minute, after you've wrung your hands through hundreds of thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars lost, whole cities wiped off the map, hoping that the latest debacle will be the last?

No, you don't get off this easy, people of America and readers of Salon. You don't get to suddenly give enough of a damn to raise a holy racket now, and have it make a difference. You sneered contemptuously at those naive pro-Gore demonstrators, those antiwar protesters you mocked for being out of touch with the times, the "crazy" people who called for impeachment before (and even after) 9/11.

You are ignorant and gullible, and you are finally starting to realize the enormity of your mistake. Show some humility, take your lumps, and for the love of all that's good don't fuck up again in 2008.

Please?

Gary Kamiya's article is incisive and offers profound insight into the nature of pride, power, and mass violence. Yet I confess, Editor, I find it chilling that Kamiya, who is old enough and experienced enough in the history of war and official duplicity in the US that he ought to have learned these lessons a long, long time ago, is only discovering them, or recollecting them, now.

As many other writers have already observed, it was Kamiya and other mainstream liberals, not the entirety of the American people, who sleepwalked through the criminal excesses of the Bush Administration. Even your magazine, Editor, was to a large extent part of the sleepwalking, and I hope that your readers continue to hold your feet to the fire every time you attempt to claim that nobody could have seen this coming.

At least most people aren't going around saying that there's no difference between one politician and the next, anymore. Bush has given us that, at least.