The Democrats are a political party and are thus fair game to be called nasty names by their political opponents. OTOH as a political party they also have every right and opportunity to fight back when called these names. Unfortunately too many Democrats have in the past have appeared to be afraid to fight back. Hopefully this is now changing, but it's a big a problem in the Democratic party.

OTOH General Petraeus is someone we've sent to Iraq to fight our battles for us--in a war which, it might be noted, very few patriots in this land of ours have shown much inclination to volunteer for. And he's under the command of the president, the civilian authority. As such, he's limited in what he can say and do--and thank God for that, because once our generals start thinking they can say and do what they want, we'll have much bigger problems than the two problems known as Bush and Cheney.

So many people don't see it as right to pick on the general or any other military person, for whatever reason. The military has to do what we tell them to do, whether they like it or not, and some of them actually die and/or get horribly wounded in the process. And so far they've done it for both Democrats and Republicans alike.

So pick on Bush, pick on the Republicans, pick on all the non-volunteering brave souls who've supported this war with every yellow ribbon they could find to stick on their gas guzzling SUVs and giant pickup trucks--but please leave the military guys out of it. It just doesn't make political sense to pick on the military. It just doesn't gain anything.

People, the voters, don't like it when people putting their lives on the line in the military are disrespected. Hence calling the general a name is politically disadvantageous.

Are the voters right to be that way? Doesn't matter. You and MoveOn still lose, because you and Moveon have absolute fucking tin ears and have no fucking idea how to speak to the public or make your political points. Hence you and Moveon made a mistake.

People, the voters, don't like it when people putting their lives on the line in the military are disrespected. Hence calling the general a name is politically disadvantageous.

Are the voters right to be that way? Doesn't matter. You and MoveOn still lose, because you and Moveon have absolute fucking tin ears and have no fucking idea how to speak to the public or make your political points. Hence you and Moveon made a mistake.

The right wing has cleverly seized upon an insignificant triviality in a MoveOn ad in order to distract attention from a failed war, while at the same time this insignificant triviality has actually struck fear in the heart of the right wing, as proven by the right wing's many howls of protest over this insignificant triviality.

Yeah, OK, believe it if you want. Personally I think it's a lot simplier to recognize that the ad poked a finger in the eye of public opinion, to no good point.

...is that if Democrats vote to pull out, then they'll be blamed for 'losing' the war and moderate and conservative Democrats will lose seats.

It isn't enough that the public now wants an end to this war. Once the war is ended, the Republicans will be free of the Iraqi millstone around their necks and we'll right back to the same old dumb conservative arguments: that America needs to show 'strength' and that our enemies will attack us if we ever show 'weakness.'

There needs to be an alternative ideology to the 'strength' doctrine. For instance it needs to be stated to the public that we should treat terrorism as a criminal activity, not as a state activity. It should be pointed out that the terrorists attacked not because we were weak, but in fact because we are strong. This is important, because as soon as we pull out of Iraq, Osama bin Laden and his friend will no doubt move heaven and earth to attack us again, so as to pull right back into the Middle East.

What we really have here is a failure of leadership and of vision. The reason the Democrats can't get off their dime is because we simply don't have a clearly articulated vision of what comes next.

The music was horrid and made it unwatchable. And it just didn't match what was on the screen!

I heartily dislike manipulative music in documentaries anyhow. Why do I need music to digest facts? But manipulation that doesn't even bother to get it right is even more annoying.

Also I was always bothered by the fact that the Civil War documentary, which was highly affecting, if not all that illuminating, was shortly followed by a real war, the first Gulf War. I've always wondered if it somehow made us eager to try out a real war for ourselves.

"...that calculus is based on the Panglossian assumption that House Democrats from conservative areas like southern Indiana would ever be willing to buck the White House on a vote that would be portrayed in Republican attack ads as not funding the troops in wartime."

That's the nut that has to be cracked. Somehow an argument has to be made in the conservative areas of the country that pulling out of Iraq is not betraying the troops. This will be true even if a Democratic president is elected next year.

However as far as I can tell, most liberals have no intention of even thinking about these people, let alone talking to them. It seems that they would rather scream about "General Betrayus" then speak in any respectful way to the people who will actually decide if the war in Iraq will continue or not.