Glenn, you are absolutely right that the media bear responsibility for allowing, or causing, a conventional premise (to arise) among them, typically based in long-standing political stereotypes that they themselves created and perpetuated, and they are then incapable of thinking about issues in any other way even when facts make inescapably clear that their premises are false.

Often, that stereotype can be boiled down to a single word or small phrase that the media have been carefully fed and upon which they continue to rely for shorthand, even, often, as they write stories that on the surface seem to take positions that oppose the war, oppose the administration's policies. Thus, a term like "cut and run" becomes synonymous, on both sides of the debate, with the putative strategy of allanti-war sympathizers. Thus, a phrase like "support the troops" can be turned into a stink bomb tossed into the midst of any discussion of reducing financial support for the war. "Escalation" can be turned into the powerful yet somehow benevolent-sounding "surge." Hillary Clinton, who expressed grave misgivings about the authority to use force and urged the contination of inspections and other nonviolent means of corraling Saddam Hussein, gets slapped with "She voted for the war," and even her would-be supporters believe it! The invasion of Iraq istelf, wherein the largest military force the world has ever seen beat the crap out of a small, minimally-motivated military force using outdated weapons that were crude by comparison when they were brand new, was labelled with the weighty term "war," connecting it in the popular mind to heroic and epic struggles out of history. Imagine if Karl Rove's terminology had been resisted from the first -- if the forces of accuracy had outshouted the manipulators and insisted that invasion and occupation be called by their proper names! How different the debate would have been, how much more difficult for Bush's people to bang the drums of...occupation? "Bush, the Invasion President?"

As Paul Rosenberg and others made clear to me yesterday, we have to counter faulty arguments and outrageous claims on all fronts, no matter how "fringe" their perpetrators. I submit that once the Karl Roves and Dick Cheneys have been allowed to choose the vocabulary, and the media that reaches the majority of minds in this country have been allowed lazily to echo that vocabulary, the debate has become much more difficult to wage out amongst the voters.

My point being, we would do well to resist on the word-and-phrase level, which would make it much more difficult for the crazies like Malkin and Gaffney, Limbaugh and O'Reilly, Reynolds and the Victory Caucus even to get their diatribes off the ground in the first place.

As I posted earlier, the "battle" to topple Saddam wasn't a war, either. It was an invasion, an extremely unevenly-matched fight that was over quickly. We feed the Rovian monster when we allow the word "war" to be used to describe any aspect of this fiasco whatsoever.

Anyone who is gung-ho about this war but who isn't making a very real and meaningful personal sacrifice for its furtherance is quite simply full of shit.

He's pro-gun control, pro-womens' right to choose, pro-gay rights, and he comes out with this bleeding-heart, reach-out-a-hand-to-the-least-among-us liberalism? Who is this guy's base?? Has he looked at his Republican Party membership card recently? If this is the real Rudy, then bring him on!

The Anna Nicole-starved among us, and those like you who pander to them, want people distracted from the war lest the question arise -- "Why aren't you in uniform, Bigmouth?"

To Mr. Cole. You are a brave and wonderful writer. Thank you for bringing this distant and dangerous struggle close where we can experience and evaluate it. Kudos to the max!

THe word "cowardice" will never find its way into a politican's speech unless it refers to the opposition.

Mrs. Clinton said, in 2002, as much as she could about her reservations regarding Bush and the risk of his potential misuse of the authorization to use force. Why is that not enough??

Shrouded in secrecy? How did the suicide bomber know where he was and have time to prepare and execute an attack? This had to be a publicity stunt. Cheney wants to be a wartime icon, like TR charging up San Juan Hill or some crap.