I concur, you'd have to try pretty hard to get banned here, that was never my point...

Just wanted to be clear, I wasn't defending Blank. He's acting like a serious wanker. My comment was an expression of my distaste for terms that come to be used to exclude ideas. Its not to say there aren't trolls, but you certainly should do your homework, as Anonymust implied, though in another context. Read all their posts, and their archives, before you brand someone that way. We may all be anonymous here, but we still 'exist' in this space. By creating a situation where someone may be unjustly branded a crank--that is a troll-- their access to this space becomes limited. AND THIS IS AN IMPORTANT SPACE. I think there are also some race, gender and other issues that should be thought about in this regard, and--I'm guessing here--that there aren't too many people of color posting here on a regular basis. I remember when I first started posting here, my opinion seemed so different than everyone else's that many perceived me to be a troll, and some called me as much. I still believe that it was because race and class breed different perspectives, and even different ways of projecting the same perspective. I hope that people understand what it is I'm trying to say, its not an attack on anyone.

Was that a-hole ever caught? It seems to me that if you were going to make an argument for a warrantless tap of someone's emails, it would certainly be reasonable to do it to a guy for doling government information about American citizens on the Internets...what happened, anybody know?

In country's that have experienced civil war, a reconciliation process is often held to ensure a peaceful transition to power sharing. Part of that reconciliation process involves tribunals that take egregious cases of abuse and hold people accountable. The idea is not to try one side or the other for all their crimes, but to offer symbolic accountability, so that people can move on without holding on to resentment.

I can imagine such a tribunal here (in the form of a senate committee), where Democrats and Republicans complicit in this whole mess would stand trial before the nation and explain their actions and rationale before a national audience. But I think, by then, monkeys would have flown out my bottom.

"I didn't realize Bush would be so incompetent in overseeing what would have been this Great War"

I find this to be an interesting excuse in the context of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act. I think its a strong possibility, had Gore won the election in 2000, we would have invaded Iraq as well, perhaps under different circumstances and perhaps with a coalition similar to that of the first gulf war in conjunction with US funded Iraqi militias; or some combination thereof. We may have used the militas as on-ground proxies while we waged the air war that we have become famous for--the Act specifically allowed for that. The Act is also symbolic of a bi-partisan desire to have a presence in Iraq that spans administrations. There's a lot of speculation here, but we did have a law on the books, obligating US foreign policy be crafted with the goal of deposing Saddam Hussein, there's no doubt about that. Revise all you like Democratic party.

In that regard, its quite possible that the plan fell to the Bush administration to craft, one so blinded by the need to set up a fire sale for cronies and concessions to well-placed contractors, that it screwed up what should have been more or less a done deal. Just a thought.

I am often struck by this very "now" view of history as well, regarding shitty wars. Vietnam was a nightmare by all available benchmarks, but we now have a "hero" of that war who can comfortably make soliliquies about his epic stay in an enemy prison camp, but never has to explain what he was doing when he was shot down in a bomber over the third world country we invaded. Good luck trying to start a public debate about how pyschotc McCain must be to remember Vietnam in anything but horrific terms. Obama's certainly never going to bring up that.

But there is another way to look at it, too. I am thirty nine. This is certainly the worst loss of life--both Iraqi and American--that my nation has been a part of in my lifetime. I am comfortable with hating this conflict for that reason alone.

now I'm curious

What Instapunk is saying, is that any black person he doesn't like is a n*****. I wonder what he calls white people he doesn't like. Its possible he also calls them n******.