Bombing Iran will be madness.

There are too many possible scenarios that could result from such an act to predict the outcome with any certainty. But one thing is certain. Every imaginable scenario involves Iran's fighting back. That means there will be a war in which U.S. soldiers in Iran and Iraq (and throughout the entire Middle East) will come under attack in many different ways: conventional warfare, terrorism, insurgency. That means a long-term disruption in global oil supply with its corollary economic, geopolitical and military consequences is more than likely. That means there will be a fierce long-term determination by Iran and other U.S. threatened nations who witness this to acquire nuclear weapons as a deterrent to future U.S. aggression. That means the possible loss of our remaining allies along with the wholesale abandonment of international treaties by friend and foe alike. That means we may become anathema to the civilized world for many years afterwards.

I don't think that there are too many readers of this blog that question the absolute madness of an attack on Iran. The madness is not ours. The madness belongs to those who knowingly help this to happen.

From an interview with Gore Vidal in today's Guardian:

What, I wonder, quailing slightly before the catalogue of conspiracy, would Jefferson and the Founding Fathers have said about Bush and the neocons? 'They would say,' replies Vidal, delivering the sentence with magisterial finality, 'that the protocols for impeachment are meant to be used. Of course Cheney should be impeached, and then I would impeach the president. They are guilty of high crimes against the constitution of the United States. We have a bad government, just out of control. We have turned into a very ugly, totalitarian society.'

And this:

It's time for Vidal's first whisky. Our conversation meanders into a gossipy discussion of Norman Mailer's latest novel, and I wonder what contemporary writers he looks at these days. 'I do a lot of reading of the dead,' he says. 'I finally got around after 50 years to reading all of Aristotle. He's very good on republics, how they always come a cropper, and why. Required reading. Republics, once lost, don't easily come back.'

http://books.guardian.co.uk/interviews/story/0,,2101279,00.html

He's 81 and still up for a fight.

Pop quiz:

How many fingers am I holding up?

However, with today's Salon home page blaring, "Preordering week for 'A Tragic Legacy' My new book, to be released June 26, examines...," it was difficult to avert my eyes, hold my nose or swallow my outrage.

Are you using Glenn's commentary today and the corresponding book launch to blog whore your own web site and book?

I'm not condemning it. It's just a question.

And back and forth and back and forth.

Always one more than you.

Forever.

P.S. I know what you're thinking, but that won't work because it's one more than that, too.

As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off.

I know that I am in the majority when I say this:

It is much more fun with the lights on!

(And much easier to see what you are doing, which almost always leads to a mutually beneficial and satisfactory outcome.)

What is the average amount of pages of comments before the inevitable infighting over libertarianism or some semantical tangent?

Any guesses/theories?

I've done a complete analysis using several state-of-the-art statistical methods recently developed to quantify such things.

The average number of comments before libertarianism is mentioned is 42 depending on whether or not Shooter or RealName have been sitting in front of their computers all morning repeatedly hitting their refresh button so that they can enter a phrase like "Is it in blog format? Otherwise, What the hell?" or "Who cares?" or "Heh" on the first page of comments at which point the other commenters immediately set about trying to humiliate them (which is not possible). This tends to delay the onset of libertarian flame wars by an average of 10 comments.

Libertarian fireworks are normally set off when a commenter accuses another commenter of not taking the first commenter seriously at which point Ron Paul almost always the conversation. After the words "Ron Paul" are written, the insults escalate and usually continue until the end of the thread. The only libertarian who is an exception to this rule is Mona, because Mona is a somewhat reasonable person, almost never takes offense, and besides, most of the other commenters seem to like her. I know I do.

Debates on issues of semantics, sidereal as they seem at times, are actually the result of one of the newer commenters over eagerly typing a response to a comment containing one or more National Spelling Bee words without waiting for sysprog, LWM, William Timberman or either of the two Pauls to provide a detailed explanation of the words at issue along with links and other references.