being excoriated in the US media for "Fahrenheit 911"'s images of normal-looking Baghdadi civilians going innocently about their business in the days preceding their sanguinary liberation. An appalled Katie Couric asked him why he did that, and Moore replied simply, "Why didn't you?"

Best answer-a-question-with-a-question I ever heard.

>>>Presumably, any military action against Iran would have targeted against specific installations and civilian deaths would have been minimal.

Presumably, you believe that our aerial military actions are planned by infallible humanitarians and carried out by laser-guided magic flying unicorns.

>>>I can assure peace-loving Glenn Greenwald, that we have a very serious, and potentially deadly quarrel with Iran's current regime.

The potential deadliness of the quarrel was precisely Glenn's point, you war-mongering nincompoop.

>>>Froomkin was easily one of the most linked-to and cited Post columnists. Why would it be good for any business's bottom line to dump him?

My memory's hazy, but didn't a cable network can Phil Donahue's show for being insufficiently gung-ho about Iraq even though it was one of their highest-rated shows?

Perhaps there are bottom lines beneath bottom lines.

By the way, your screen name is really cool.

like criticizing a newspaper for firing a Jewish journalist.

if Obama were a man of the soft, flaccid Left, let alone the hard Left.

I find your inattentiveness to grammar and punctuation very manly. Complete sentences are for wussies.

The Wittes/Peppard detention plan is premised on the assumption that we need to designate classes of people to whom the most basic Constitutional protections and fundamental American values shall not apply. For those of us who categorically reject that assumption, it is a non-starter. I don't know where you want the ball to be moved, but leave me out of it.

>>>Glenn still hasn't addressed the fact that the Supreme Court, twice, has ruled that in certain instances preventive detention is permissible.

To which decisions do you refer?

As others have previously explained, the Ricci panel that included Sotomayor did give reasons, incorporating by reference the reasoning of the district court. As a lawyer with an extensive federal practice, I can assure you that there is nothing even remotely unusual about circuit courts affirming district court decisions in this way. It is done routinely in every federal appeals court, simply because it is efficient: if the panel concludes that the district court reached the right result for the right reasons, there's no need for the appeals court to waste time and resources reinventing the wheel. Of course, an appeals court can also affirm the lower court's decision with no comment at all (and this happens every day).

I voted for Obama because I thought he would be a much better president than McCain (a belief to which I still cling, albeit with ever-increasing desperation). But if it had been a close call on the merits, I would have voted for Obama because of his race. Because the election of a black president was, I believe, a very meaningful and inspiring milestone in this country's history.

Does that make me a racist?

Read Judge Cabranes more closely. He said the plaintiff's claims were worthy of Supreme Court review. He didn't say that the three-judge circuit panel (of which SS was part) failed to review anything, and there is no basis for inferring inadequate review by the panel. Either the district court got it right, or it didn't. The 2nd Circuit panel thought the district court got it right; five Supremes thought otherwise. So it goes.

I asked you a simple question, too. Are you going to answer it?

Words don't mean anything ffffffft skallygaping snarglepoop lippy-lappy foo-foo. See?

Why does it matter whether Glenn describes something as "creepy"?

You are so right. Emphasizing the parts of the interrogation program that were torture over the parts that were NOT torture is really unfair.

Consider the following interrogation scenario:

Interrogator asks detainee his name. Not torture.

Interrogator asks detainee if he knows any terrorists. Not torture.

Interrogator insults detainee's mother. Not nice, but not torture.

Interrogator squats over a copy of the Koran and shits on it in front of detainee (who is a devout Muslim). Disgusting and wrong, but probably not torture.

Interrogator castrates detainee with a rusty butter knife. Torture!

Now, some narrow-minded people might call this a "torture session" in an effort to advance a political agenda. But this interrogator did four things that were not torture, and only one thing that was torture, so a politicized label like "torture session" would be totally unfair.

Thank God for clear thinkers like you.

>>>This is the tiniest viola in the world playing for the world's oppressed white minority.

As a white male Jew, and hence a member of three oppressed minority groups, I demand three violas.

>>>On the other hand, perhaps Glenn's purpose IS to ascribe some amount of blame to US citizens for these atrocities, to persuade them to do something about it.

I think this is correct. The American government acts in the name of the American citizenry, and "we" the citizenry are responsible for its actions whenever its actions are public knowledge. When the US government tortures people, we are all stained and shamed by this. The blood of the bombed Iraqis and the tortured detainees is on ALL our hands, no matter how vigorously some of us have opposed the policies in question. To be sure, Dick Cheney is more culpable than, say, GG or myself, but we're all responsible for what our government does in our names and with our tax dollars.

>>>The world is so sick and tired of the Arabs and Muslims whining about the injustice done to them.

Substitute "Jews" for "Arabs and Muslims" in the above sentence. How does it read now?

I'm so sick and tired of being sick and tired of racist claptrap.