The president just called me and told me his plan. He says he can make the country safe and secure, but unfortunately you will have to take a pay cut. Your new yearly salary is $50 (fifty dollars). No health care or other benefits either, I'm afraid. Too socialized. Quit expecting government to do it all for you. Maybe you can pick up a graveyard shift at the Quick-E-Mart.

Thanks in advance for being on board with this plan. You're the best!

Now we're getting somewhere, Elephantman; it's a misunderstanding of terms.

A rebuttal is when one person makes a claim in defense of their argument, and an opponent finds and offers countering evidence which seeks to logically negate or lessen the original claim.

Joe Wilson's position was that he found no evidence of Saddam Hussein attempting to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger and the administration claims were weak at best.

The administration rebuttal (a real rebuttal) would be to put their countering evidence on the table: "He did, and here's why we know that."

They didn't. Instead, they countered with something equivalent to "Oh yeah? Well I hear you wet your bed until you were five! Bed wetter! Bed wetter! Wilson wets the bed!" The birth of a typical Republican talking point.

If Cheney's aim was not to build a case for a predetermined outcome (Invasion) then his only rational response would be to seriously investigate Wilson's report so as not to blunder into a war which would claim a hundred thousand lives. If you're going to go to war, you better have a damn good last-resort reason to do so. Cheney didn't. Wilson's report was not informative to him, it was an irrelevant inconvenience. Plame's status at the CIA was also irrelevant to him. No matter who went to Niger, the report had better damn well echo the official party line, or that person would find themselves paying the price of insubordination.

Civility, huh? As in:

"Oh, dear, pardon me. I did not see you there, sir. I hope I have not disturbed you?"

"Not at all, dear chap. I hope I didn't startle you. I've been on a bit of a tramp around the stadium, looking for a place to take a crap in relative privacy, with no plumbing and all that bother."

"Two minds with but a single thought, old bean, for I, also, have been seeking a place where one might, so to speak, find bodily relief."

"Say no more! It seems to me this slightly darkened corridor should do the trick. What say you, new friend, if I may dare have the honor of addressing you as such?"

"You may, sir, you may, if you will allow me the honor of granting you the privilege of going first whilst I stand watch and hold my coat thusly to afford a little more privacy."

"No, sir, I insist, you first; for I see by your hopping from one leg to another that your need is dire."

"It is, sir, it is. But gadzooks you astound me and make me blush! You are the very model of civility, sir. The very model!"

Is Qualcomm stadium completely hemmed in and isolated by fire so that the stadium is unreachable? Were food, water and other supplies able to be trucked in in sufficient quantities to deal with the crisis? Were refugees just left to fend for themselves with limited resources? Did those supplies get shipped in immediately, or did they trickle in gradually on a too little too late basis over the course of days? Considering there were no resources to distribute, what were people in New Orleans supposed to volunteer to do? Will a vast majority of the evacuees have a home to return to when it's all over, or are they aware already that their homes, their entire ward has been destroyed and they have nothing to return to? Do the bathrooms work? Were people who tried to walk out of the stadium forced back into the stadium at gunpoint? Are you really equating having a fully functioning road and other infrastructure advantages with having those same roads for miles around being feet-deep underwater?

Are you really as smug and clueless as you seem to be, or are you just an asshole? It's a yes or no question.

As time goes on, the more I almost have to agree with Elric O M's point in the letter "Crazy like a Fox." Look, I'm not an expert. I think I'm pretty smart but I haven't studied the middle East in the depth that others have. Still, I have read some, and I know where the countries are, who lives where, how the populations relate to each other, and where their allegiances lie. Using that little bit of knowledge, what continually gnaws at me now is that EVERYTHING I predicted to friends long before the war started has now come true.

What gnaws at me is this: If I could predict it, then I can't believe that all of the people responsible for this mess couldn't have been able to see it happening as well. They have been so entirely wrong about everything that it beggars belief. The only conclusion left, then, is that from their viewpoint things now stand precisely where they want them to stand, precisely where they intended all along for them to stand. The alternative to that — that they truly had not the slightest idea — just doesn't make any sense.

Bush clearly is going to do everything in his power to drive us deeper into the tar pit, and the Democrats clearly do not intend to mount an opposition to that policy. I think I can predict what will happen in the US in the next few years, but I can't bring myself to actually believe it. It can't be true. It just can't.