"In the context of the Lancet study controversy, it was conceded that arguing from ignorance isn't vindicated if later information comes out that proves your guess to be correct."

Pudgeboy's is the same logic responsible for the phenomenon of people who have been wrong about every single thing with regard to Iraq, and yet are still treated respectfully as authorities on what to do next. No one could know for an absolute certainty whether Saddam had WMD, so those who said he didn't have any were just as wrong as those who said he had tons of them, even though he turned out not to have any. (Who knew?) The dirty hippies just got lucky. It's the logic by which Bush sleeps easy at night, figuring we'll all be dead by the time history sorts out whether he did right or wrong. No one really knows how shit will turn out, anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's, so why not keep surging?

Sure, if we flip a coin and I call heads and you call tails, I'm not "vindicated" if it comes up heads. But, as you point out with respect to the "covert" issue, very rarely are questions debated in a perfect vacuum of equal ignorance. There is almost always at least some available evidence to which people apply their logical faculties in the context of their experience and worldview. And when the same people keep being wrong about everything, it ain't just bad luck.

unable to grasp that deriding men (or, as you put it, "men") for allegedly not being as tough as a woman is, in fact, insulting to women? I'm asking sincerely. Do you really not get that?

I think I finally understand the theory underlying Michelle Malkin's defense of Americans herding innocent people into concentration camps. The Nazis, after all, did it too...

I do hate Bush more than I hate Al Qaeda. Bush has killed a lot more people, for one thing. If you consider dead American soldiers in Iraq to be murder victims of Bush, as I do, then Bush has even killed more Americans than AQ. When Al Qaeda slaughters and tortures people, it does not purport to be acting on my behalf, and its savagery is not funded by my tax dollars. Bush has done something I would have thought impossible prior to 2003: made me ashamed of being an American. So I hate him, and I "bash" him. It's not about politics, it's about the soul of my beloved country, which I believe Bush has twisted and corrupted beyond recognition.

NOTE: I am not "the Left." I'm just one individual and representative of absolutely no one. I don't know Glenn Greenwald and have no connection to Glenn Greenwald other than reading and sometimes commenting on his blog.

As long as a potential Iranian "threat" to Israel appeared to be the main focus of the attack-Iran campaign, I remained doubtful that such an attack would occur. As demonstrated by the massive PR blitz that preceded the Iraq invasion, the people who actually make the decisions (i.e., Bush, Cheney and Rove, NOT anyone named Kristol, Kagan or Podhoretz) do care about U.S. public opinion, and they do care about Republican electoral prospects in 2008 and beyond. Most Americans agree with Glenn and most of his readers that a potential future threat to Israel (as distinguished from an actual attack on Israel) in no way warrants more U.S. military involvement in the Mid-East. In other words, a preventive war on behalf of Israel is simply not salable.

But with this front page NYT story, the campaign to attack Iran has palpably, almost audibly, shifted a gear. Now we have the New York Times reporting what almost sounds like an actual offensive, by Iran, against the United States, right now. Now there's a product you can sell. And the proper response is being "debated" at the highest levels of the Bush Administration. Holy fuck.

pussy. Iraqis go without electricity every day, and it doesn't stop them from being happy and grateful. What kind of collective punishment is that? What the Israelis should do is starve the Palestinians. Put them in camps (real camps, not those Club Meds the liberal media calls "refugee camps") and don't let them eat. Nothing concentrates the mind like Day Four Without Food. And any time a rocket comes in from Gaza, take ten randomly selected Palestinians out and shoot them. Shoot children in front of parents, and vice versa. Concentrates the mind wonderfully. Ultimately this will work out well for the Palestinians. In addition to their enhanced powers of concentration, once enough of them have been starved and murdered, and the world sees pictures of their grotesquely defined ribcages, people will feel sorry for them and give them a country of their own. Hey, it worked for the Jews. See? Under the Gator90 Plan, everybody wins.

Isn't it the fact of the matter that the Democrats' strategy is to run out the clock on the Bush presidency while being just oppositional enough to keep the base sullen instead of mutinous, avoid the terrifying political risks of mounting any genuine challenge to despotic powers asserted by a despised president, hope that Bush leaves office without blowing up the world first, and hope that he is replaced by a Democrat or at least by a less despotic Republican, such that the present constitutional crisis can fade away without anyone having to do anything that might significantly upset the status quo?