Wow -- what was that, 150-some letters? I read every one of them -- interesting. Some were very thoughtful, reflective, potentially very helpful. Quite a few were from people who had obviously been through some situations that LW's letter brought back to them. And a few had a hard time sticking to the topic... ("brightstar" -- I assume your name is ironic? No? O, my bad... FOUR posts saying it's all those leftist feminists' faults? You and Fogelburger, or whatever, might wanna step outside and form your own little off-site there; you might be a bit more comfortable among your own kind. And, please, take a pill -- I mean it; Thorazine® is most definitely indicated.)

Between 1-in-8 and 1-in-7, I think, mentioned the kids [potential, that is]. Good point. Be nice if Cary had thought along those lines, but glad somebody did.

Many people made the point that physical abuse tends to escalate; some brought up the utterly irrelevant fact that when abuse eventually turns pathologic -- or deadly -- it can always be traced back to starting points like this. Bad math. The relevant question is: of all the instances of occasional, relatively minor domestic violence, what proportion does eventually escalate, and what proportion, if any, disappears -- and under what circumstances? Anyone know?

Having said that, my final thought is: behaviors can change. But character rarely does. I feel really bad for both people, and wish them the best. They'll need it.

That we are failing to care properly for people who have put themselves in harm's way in our service is appalling enough.

But there is more than enough blame to go around. The mdeia have failed -- I sholuld not have to be a subscriber to a website to have learned about this in this multi-year war.

But, from my perspective, the worst failure of all is that of our Democratic "leaders," who are doubly failing -- in serving their constituents with proper oversight, and in failing to make a clear distinction with the hypocrisies of an administration and a political party that roar with "patriotic" rhetoric -- and then fail to "support the troops" in the most basic ways. Democrats should be leading the charge to provide proper support of all kinds -- medical, financial, and logistic -- to the military, and in making it as obvious as possible that the Republicans in the administration and Congress are NOT the supporters of the military that they claim to be.

This is a political, as well as a moral and material, failure, and the shame is greater on our side; we should know better.

...would be attained immediately, if every man's thought of, relationship to, interaction with, and treatment of every woman were informed by the thought, "And if this were my sister / mother / daughter in this situation..."

Feminism is necessitated by the simple failure of men to have an imagination.

Sorry, that's from an old Jewish joke.

But Marco and Pyrian ARE both right, as is Mr. Leonard, too. There are legitimate rights at stake, as well as both the potential for and actual abuses on all sides, in situations like this. In each instance, it's the specifics and circumstances that define who is "right" -- and one can easily imagine many situations where "right" would not be cut and dried at all.

Thus, when cases like these are adjudicated in conditions of secrecy, as Mr. Leonard reports this one to be, it becomes very difficult for an outsider to determine which type of situation -- justified, abusive, somewhere in between -- we're dealing with.

But that's why the lawyers get paid the big, big dollars-- and why each MP3 player might wind up costing us $2 more next year.

It took the rabidly anti-Communist Nixon to do what no Democrat would ever have been allowed to do, to go to and establish rapprochement with China. And it took the war-criminal Sharon to do what no Labor leader would ever have been permitted -- to get the Israeli settlers to leave Gaza.

Are we doomed to forever having the worst among us be the only ones with the political credibility to be able to do what is right and necessary? Why is that?

Seems from the back-story here, and from reading the Smoking Gun article (6 pages worth, very detailed, with on-the-spot interviews of the cops who WOULDA been involved if the stories were true), that this is just one of those little-bitty harmless lies that then blow up out of all proportion -- by which time it's way too late to do anything about it.

As novels, both Frey books were okay -- a bit much, a bit over-the-top maybe, a few too many coincidences, a few too many characters who are just too perfect to be real ("cinematic," as one of the Smoking gun writers puts it) -- but still okay. But, someone in the publishing chain points out, they'd sell SOOO much better if they were memoirs...

And that's all she wrote. Ironically, if they had been left to stand on their own as fiction, the books might have sold nicely, and made everyone a few happy dollars, and no-one's the worse for it. But of course, once you start claiming they're non-fiction -- the only reason they blew up to mega-seller status in the first place -- it's then too late to change the story, and, inevitably the lies multiply and become more tangled, and people have to choose sides between disillusionment & an increasingly-difficult defense of the author.

Pity, that. Sure hope he doesn't relapse. (If he was ever a real addict at all, that is.)

More important, I sure hope that none of the REAL addicts-in-recovery out there who have been relying on these success stories for hope and as role-models wind up set back by their disillusionment, or by any failures to live up to a "reality" that even its progenitor never really lived. If apologies are owed, it is to them more than anyone else.