for independent study a good one is:

David Kelley, The Art of Reasoning. New York: Norton and Co. It has a nice paperback edition with self-tests with answers and so forth.

You should be able to find it on Amazon.com. Look in the used book part for even better prices.

I immediately thought of something I had said in a class on Plato's Republic. Socrates is arguing against the position that justice is to do good to friends and evil to enemies, and says that a just man will never do evil to anyone (in fact would rather suffer evil than do it). To do evil means for him to lessen the essential integrity of a living nature, to make it less excellent. And I told my class about something I saw on the news once, back when we popped off a bunch of cruise missiles at Libya. And on the news I saw a building where one of those missiles had god off course and struck an apartment building and killed a grandma, a wife, and a five year old child. And the father was there on camera holding the child, and next to him was part of the missile with a "us" on it. And the man was screaming, and according to the interpreter he was screaming: I hate you America! I hate you forever! And I said to my class: see, he was made less excellent as a human being. According to Plato, a just person could not do that. That was the first thing that came to my mind on 9-11. I wondered if he was on one of the planes.

is worth reading through from beginning to end. It is an eye-opener (and it will break your heart).

you keep saying things like: "but next January they'll be ready to lay down their lives for him?" But honestly, man, in all my time in the Army I never met anyone who thought they were fighting for the president or really gave a damn about him. Even poor white southerners (wait: I was a poor white southerner. How about that? Just realized I used to fit your category when I rist joined up. hehe).

the Army was the least racist place I have ever worked in.

Yeah: I would like to get that guy Kagan up one morning and take him up on a ten mile run. Just before breakfast.

yeah I got ya. I have had hyperbolic episodes myself.

by the way: do you mean that enlightened general quote for someone else? (I didn't say that).

in helping me sort out my thoughts on McCain, Glenn. Thank you for your work.

for the link to the Filkins thing in the nyt. One reason I find reading the comments here so useful is for things like this.

Though it is a sad situation you limn so clearly:

The propaganda flow will surely be ramped upwards over the next months with the American political media "majors" fully embedded in and with it.

Even if one takes time and makes effort to learn and know more about this Rape of Iraq what happens then?

Try voting out the warmongers and defunding the Pentagon and taking away American Corporatism.

John McCain is going to get the full "soft touch" treatment because vested interests will make it possible. Sadly pathetic.

Meanwhile the Democratic Party is being run aground by the Clintonites and Barack Obama's pastor will be endlessly looped.

Nice catch: " 'We are seeing a world in which great power rivalries — with China, Russia and Iran — have to be managed and soothed.'

See that? Iran is a great power. In Brooks' world, it's influence is on a par with Russia and China.

That is your Big Lie."

Isn't that amazing? Is Brooks doing this on purpose, do you think? Or is he the unwitting tool of the lie, believing it himself so strongly that he writes this?

Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly has a nice cheat sheet up McCain could use: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_03/013419.php

WHO'S WHO....Can't tell the players without a program in the 2-way (or is it 3-way or 4-way?) intra-Shiite gang war currently underway in Basra and southern Iraq? Here's a quick cheat sheet:

ISCI = SIIC = new name for SCIRI = Badr Corps = "aristocratic" Hakim family = exiles during Saddam Hussein's reign = pro-Iran = generally in control of army and security forces = pro-U.S. = ally of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Dawa Party.

Mahdi Army = JAM = "firebrand cleric" Muqtada al-Sadr = Iraqi nationalists = originally part of Maliki's governing coalition but no longer = anti-U.S. = populist/working class orientation = controls much of the oil sector in Basra.

"Special groups" = rogue elements of the Mahdi Army = maybe Sadr is just as happy to have Maliki take these guys out for him, but who knows for sure?

Fadhila = ex-allies of Sadr = won some elections in Basra in 2005 = smallest of the three Shiite factions in the south.