Sorry our letters interface has been hard to use today -- Douglas Moran is right, we've been slammed by traffic. I just want to reply to a few threads and clarify what we're doing here.

First of all, what makes me proudest of this work (and a lot of things make me proud)is that Mark Benjamin obtained this information by being one of the best American reporters writing about how this country that's creating so many veterans is trying to make their lives tough when they come back from war. Mark's pieces on the trouble diagnosing PTSD, the government's abortive effort to review such claims, on the problems with psych treatment at Walter Reed, on the new generation of brain injuries thanks to the type of war in Iraq...these stories won him respect and trust by soldiers and veterans...and led to our Abu Ghraib reporting. Mark is amazing and deserves so much credit for making this happen.

Equally important, there are many people in the military who want more of this to come out. They feel their careers have been blighted by this. They wonder at the lack of punishment for people of higher rank. I'm a liberal, I admit that, but I don't see this as a right wing/left wing, military v. non-military thing. The sides are really complicated, which is the best kind of story. We really have no agenda here except illuminating the truth.

Finally, last month the Danish cartoons were the way conservatives smeared our Abu Ghraib cartoons, and this month it seems it's our failure to run beheading videos that makes us craven ideologues. Let me put that claim to rest: Salon ran video of the Danny Pearl and Nick Berg murders when it became available. We thought it was important to make it possible for people who wanted to bear witness. I did bear witness, and I wish I hadn't. But some nights I wish I hadn't looked at these 279 photos, either. It's all our job, and we're doing it well right now, and I'm really proud of my staff for working so hard and being so meticulous and clinical and non-ideological, just trying to bring our readers what the evidence suggested -- and thus make our readers partners in figuring out what this means. We did our best, and still I assume by letting go of this information, other readers -- on the right or left -- will learn details that let them shine light on things we don't know yet they think are important, and that may well be.

Have at it. But to the people who are coming in here with their ideological guns blazing: C'mon put them down and poke around for a while. Read. Look at photos. Check out the letters. You might be surprised by what you find. I'm awestruck and humbled and, for the last four weeks, mildly sickened by the sadistic photos -- and blown away that all this cruelty lives alongside courageous efforts to get the story out.

In my last post I conflated Danish cartoons with our photos, which of course are not cartoons, after a month spent fighting that particular line of reasoning. Sorry about that, it's been a very very long month.

Sigh. Thanks for thanking me for...editing Joe, and then adding a mistake to his column. Our shingle outside Salon says: "Sure, we make mistakes, but we correct them as quickly as humanly possible! Thanks for reading!"

I edited Joe's column as the plagiarism mess was breaking, I added the links...and I screwed up. I have no memory of a movie called "The Bachelor" and while I linked to Mary Beth's piece, I assumed it was the legendary and mostly unwatchable reality television show. My apologies to Joe and Mary Beth, and to our readers.

I love Al Gore. I loved the slide show that became "An Inconvenient Truth." But I noticed many of the interesting Gore mannerisms that Andrew did -- and like Andrew, I found they made him more trustworthy and authentic, not less. (John Heileman's great cover story in New York this week raises similar questions, and Gore answers them by acknowledging he's not a born politician, which makes him seem more real and admirable). Raising these questions about Gore as a man, a candidate, a filmmaker and a wonk is not a way to marginalize him, it's a way of understanding his potential limits -- as well as the appeal his awkward authenticity can give him.

I think there are reasonable questions about whether this terrific movie -- and Andrew did give it a great review -- can change minds on this issue and change politics (I'm optimistic, maybe Andrew's less so, but...it's certainly debatable.) So...I read this piece before it went up, liked it a lot, and never anticipated the reaction, given how overall positive it is. We can argue all day about the Fairfax v. Ritz Carlton v. apartment building period of Gore's life. He spent a lot of time in DC, either way, while also working on a farm in Tennessee. We can argue about his accent, which, whatever its origin, is known to dramatically change from setting to setting -- whether he's in a black church, where I've seen him speak, or at Google, where I also saw him speak. I've never thought that was a sign of inauthenticity -- mine changes when I'm with my Long Island relatives. But it is a fact.

Another fact is that no one at Salon is out to get Al Gore, certainly not Andrew O'Hehir, and the level of paranoia in this letters thread is a little disturbing. For the record, we aren't Fox News, and we aren't committed to only bright and shiny coverage of our bright and shiny Democrats. But this wasn't even a critical piece, overall. Please save your firepower for a case where there's a clear transgression. Andrew O'Hehir is one of our best critics and fairest writers and he deserves better.