In the "new media" facts don't matter all that much. They don't matter to Drudge, who once famously claimed that Clinton staffers who of course were murderers and rapists, we're stalking him. And that don't matter here all that much either. As long as or anyone can get that insult out, that slur, and 1,000 of your closest friends online can wanly grin to one another, here, or on FreeRepublic or whatever then everyone goes away happy.

A side effect of "new media" is that fewer people than ever are ever swayed or convinced of anything new let alone educated. Everyone brings their own guns to the gunfight, fires all their bullets and leaves. That's it. So while Drudge is of course a paid shill for the Republicans, and no sane person doubts this, what's the difference? No one comes away with a different impression or sense of things than they arrived with.

And this by the way why, if you get to an election and 20% of the people polled expressed 'no opinion' or 'unsure' you should probably abandon elections altogether because it means that 1 in 5 might be retarded or completely inattentive.

Yeah, Hitler. Now how do you feel girly-man?

My point, namecaller is simple. In the case of Kosovo, if anyone bothered to put down the bong and pay attention, is, for better or worse the story of a breakaway statelet. Kosovo's KLA wanted to be off on its own so it met up with the Albanian army to arm them and harass the Serbian nationals who lived in Kosovo. They prompted the Serbians to hit back and precipitate a war. This is precisely what they intended to do and the Serbians, over reacted in precisely the way we all expected them to do.

It's not really 'nation building' so much as nation creating. The state formerly known as Serbia has been dissected by the UN into Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo and now, Montenegro. That hardly sounds like nationbuilding to me - taking one country and turning it into 4. Why is that acceptable yet breaking up Iraq into 3 or 4 or 5 states anathema?

Next, Kosovo really is a dictatorship run literally, in actuality by the UN viceroy, Christian Schwarz-Schilling who took over from the famous Paddy Ashdown. The High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina is in practice a dictator who rules by decree much in the same way the the Iraqi provisional government operated except it has the legal grace of being completely above any law or appeal. For 12 years and counting.

Oh wait we weren't talking about those thieves. My bad.

They have nothing better to do than what? Tell me in 4 or 5 or 6 straight long winded posts that they're not reading my posts. Uh ok, gotcha dudes and dudettes. You're just digging yourselves in deeper. You're becoming your own performance art proving my point. Thanks!

By my moral betters from the ignorant blogging class and sidewalk Marxists, but there is simply no resolution to Iraq at all. There are only two options: anarchy and authoritarianism. Pick one. No amount of military intervention can fix it. None. The Brits were there for 37 years, they couldn't figure it out. If we had a half million troops we couldn't do it either. That's why it's patently stupid to stick around and try. Find another Saddamn, some ruthless autocrat who can create another Republican Guard to point their guns into the country not out, and let him maintain order. Certainly if they apply brute force in way we're ashamed of, we won't really care. And why should we? Iraq isn't a country to start with. It's a creation made up from some British cartographer waving his pointer over a map. That's what dictators are for - to hold those fake countries together. Tito did it with Yugoslavia very well and with a light touch. So let's find an Iraqi Tito and give him the job. Of course you radicals won't like that either and will immediately start calling him the Iraqi Shah or something. But I'm sure we can find some Left of Center national socialist type like the soon to be dead Khaddafy who the radicals would accept. Pull our people out, put out dictator in and wait for the radicals to start complaining about that.

It will be interesting to see the fallout to Chirac now that he lost his immunity and there have been serious noises of corruption, treason even, going back years. As if somehow they are immune from the same corporate hackery as everyone else.

there is a long article extolling the virtues of so called New Media as the god given unbiased completely fair and just truth. How can it be that my bloggers are all angels and yours are all craven toadies?

If by good you mean Benz quality ratings and customer sat crashed through the floor and now their relative ratings in quality and customer sat and service dropped from #1 or #2 to maybe on a good day, somewhere in the top ten then yeah they made things too good. A big driver for Daimler to buy Chrysler originally was the promise of being able to build Benz bodies atop cheap Chrysler cars, use the same floor pan, hopefully swap out Benz power plants for Chrysler power plants at least and the bottom end and make fatter margins.

I think you can expect them to dismember the company and keep the Dodge trucks and that line of Nazi Staff Car inspired Crossfires, Magnums, 300's and such and toss everything else out including the minivans and Jeep. Almost all the Dodges are the same car anyhow. None of those discarded cars & minivans are quality plays. They could be built by anyone anywhere. They're sold on price.

Happily they already shot Mitsu in the head out behind the outhouse. It was possibly the worst lowest quality brand in America.