So your argument is:

a) the Iranians might be crazy;

b) because the Iranians might be crazy, the Israelis might get scared enough to do something dumb;

c) therefore, the U.S. should do the dumb thing first so the Israelis don't have to;

d) if lots of people have to die, it's better that the U.S. kill them than that they die from other country's bombs.

Am I missing anything?

I agree completely with what you're saying. But I believe another factor weighing heavily here is that Vitter is from Louisiana and could potentially be replaced by a Dem = not good. Craig is from Idaho and would probably be replaced by a Rep = good. This makes it doubly easy to call for one's replacement while the other is left in place.

David Frum, on "Left, Right and Center" today, said that "...America has committed its prestige to the survival of an effective Iraqi state."

We have friends who were in government and they are always talking about the need to maintain the "prestige" of the U.S. It's a big thing with a lot of people. Many of them don't object to torture because it's wrong, they object because it hurts our "prestige". A lot of them don't like George W. because he hurts our "prestige", too -- they don't mind a warmonger, they just the warmonger to be well-spoken, preferably with a wry wit. Keeping up appearances, don't you know.

Every word Petraeus speaks, every order he gives, every sentence he writes, every interview he grants in support of Smirky's and Darth's Endless War is a betrayal of his Service Oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and his responsibility as a commander to his troops.

Posted by Yellow Dog, Friday, September 7, 2007 07:25 AM

Yes. Perfect summation. All the spinning and rah-rahing can't disguise this basic fact. American kids and Iraqis are dying every day for a big lie. The Constitution is being shredded for a big lie.

Glenn -- first para you have "renown", should have an "ed" at the end. Your spellcheck won't pick it up.

the censorship involved in closing the play about Rachel Corrie in New York, and the ongoing shutting down of speaking engagements that Mearsheimer and Walt are currently undergoing. Or how about the nutty historian who is in prison in Germany for the crime of denying the Jewish holocaust?

The right has no problems with any of those acts of free-speech chilling and outright government censorship in the German case. Could it be that the right's problem is strictly one of anti-Muslim bias, and has nothing to do with defending free speech?

of the Rachel Corrie play. I had hoped that the fear of being charged with anti-semitism for seeming to criticize Israel would be less in Canada than it is in the U.S. Sadly, that appears not to be the case.

I just hope Canada doesn't encourage the wearing of T-shirts showing a Caterpillar tractor and a squashed Rachel Corrie, like some of the wonderful people in the right wing have done.

...to tell us all how horrible, icky, and unteachable those dirty Muslims are! What took you so long to get here?

Thank the LORD, Golden Boy has finally destroyed any rationale we Islamo-apologists had for idolizing Ward Churchill. Now we can stop. What a relief. Thanks, GB!

It turns out that there IS a group in Gaza that would behead Britney and Madonna.

Hey, shooter, I was just watching Fox, too, and saw the same story! Wowie!

I heard some people on one of the Ebay sellers' boards saying they wanted to turn the Middle East into a "glass parking lot" and "kill all the Muslims". Is that as bad as some Muslim guy wanting to behead Britney and Madonna? Prolly not, huh?

Muslims = yucky

Muslims who don't agree with U.S. hegemony in the Middle East and the Likudniks = better be dead

And, as Glenn queried upthread, if you believe Muslims are so irredeemably horrible sub-human, then what are our options? You've said before that you have no opinions or ideas on what to do about these filthy Muslims, you just want to make sure the rest of us realize how filthy Muslims truly are and always will be.

If you don't think there's anything to be done about it, why do you care?

Perhaps its time for all blogs to start showing the war for what it is. All the pain, misery, and destruction, united in a mission to deliver the truth to the lie. Show the dead children, show the marketplace explosions, show the insurgency for what it really is, show the dead american soldiers, show the fortified green zone, show the lack of public services and let the media try to perpetuate the lie.

The war-mongers didn't learn a lot from Vietnam, but they did learn this -- no yucky pictures to upset the American public. It has worked beautifully, too. Real pictures would be a big start to finally ending this stupid thing.

Re: religious leaders. The Pope has condemned the war. Obviously the Quakers have. But I believe the Council of Churches, which (I may be wrong here, demoninationally, I'm a little fuzzy) I think is a group of the largest mainstream Protestant churches have condemned the war. I'm pretty sure the Episcopal Church in America has also condemned it. But none of that gets much publicity. Perhaps if more priests and pastors, every Sunday, preached against the war, their congregations would get more active.

Personally, I think that most Americans aren't very affected by the war so, while they might oppose it, they're mostly not up in arms about it. If they saw images of caskets coming home, of blown up Iraqi kids and crying mothers, of Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan, etc., they'd be more agitated and on the phone to their gov. reps. more often. As it is now, it's too easy to ignore.