A year or so ago on your old blog, I posted a link to an article which detailed how, under Pinochet, the Chilean judiciary and supreme court found ways to pervert the interpretation of its existing laws to achieve most of the objectives sought by the dictature.

I used this example to claim that in fine the law means only what those in power say it means, no more, no less.

While I believe Bush himself will leave in 2009, I am concerned that "regime" (should I say the nomenklatura?) will find new unprecedented "legal" ways to retain its power.

Then George finally married Laura while Karl fetched the wood and gasoline for the bonfire afterward.

Personally, I hope General Sock Puppet lies through his teeth and we stay there as long as it takes to fully and incontrovertibly lead us to the massive realization that we have truly lost.

I'm fed up to hear the right-wing wackos claim that if we'd stayed in 'Nam we shoulda, coulda, mighta.

No more delusions. Give defeat a chance.

Given that this isn't a football game where the teams can just stop playing and go home after they lost, I find your statement rather callous. The longer we stay, the more death and destruction will occur. I sure hope you're not willing to literally sacrifice peoples lives in order to score political points.

The catharsis you mention ain't gonna happen, as much as we'd both like it to.

Callous, yes, but not for any political points.

First, a massive defeat can save many more lives in the long-run.

Second, look at Germany: it needed to be unquestionably defeated a second time to go through the "catharsis" you mention. America had Viet-Nam. We obviously learned nothing from it. We won't change for the better unless we experience a resolutive defeat.

The alternative is more "stab in the back" lies for our grandchildren.

My bet, however, is that we'll get the worst of two worlds: a significant (but not resolutive) defeat AND the lies.

We have met the insurgents and it is us.

...When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

It is almost mythical that we have turned into the very thing than we once fought.

It reminds me of the infamous gaffe once attributed to President Bourguiba of Tunusia: "Last year we stood on the edge of the cliff; this year, we made a great leap forward."

I hope no one will mind if I throw a reminder that the use of old quotes to ridicule present statements was pioneered to smashing effect by Bill Montgomery aka Billmon on his much-regretted Whisky Bar blog.

This is a bit of a kabuki show and unworthy of much attention.

You knew what Centcom's answer would be, and they knew what yours would be as well.

It would have been refreshing is you had written:

- I'd like an opportunity to crucify the little bastard and drag him in the shit of his own contradictions.

and then they might have replied:

- you traitorous scum will never ever speak to, even less darken the doorstep of, our glorious manly leader; I hope you die.

Now that would have been novel.

And even if you had obtained an interview with General Sockpuppet, I bet you could pretty much anticipate 99% of his answers beforehand. Much of it would have been like the snark above. Wabbit. Duck. Wabbit.

Then, what?

This is not a cross examination, Glenn; more like a play where the lines are written in advance.

I wonder how much he charges for blow jobs.

Never mind.

I wish I had a few robust henchmen and a plane to take the two gentlemen and dump them somewhere in Baghdad.

I forgot where I recently read the words of an Iraqi survivor (no other words will do), a Shiite whose family had been decimated by Saddam, who wrote that he would kiss the tyrant's feet if only he would get back and restore the Iraq that was.

The venality and blindness of the America media establishment complicit in this genocide make Julius Streicher a wholesome fellow with sincere convictions by comparison.

It is enough to read the coverage in the European press to want to consign these two men to the hell they created.

As I said yesterday, Glenn wisely does not discuss the motivations of these men -- no one is, after all, a mind reader -- but sooner or later, we will have to come to terms with what I would dub the venality ("conflict of interest" seems way too tame) of these "journalists".

The tangled web of interests, the six-figure salaries, the fringe benefits, the opportunities from think tanks to speeches and books, all that calls for a giant board with photos and arrows that would expose the network of chumminess and backscratching of this swamp of reptiles.

What we're looking at is not so different, I suspect, from the nest of vipers that the Court of courtesans, ex-, present and future mistresses, wannabe noblemen and favor-seekers, adventurers, quacks and charlatans, servile old men and incompetent generals, diplomats and spies, surrounding the Monarchs of the 18th century where everyone was for sale.

Some of it, of course, is self-induced blindness; no doubt, their ego cannot allow them to face their delusions. But I have no doubt that the root of it all is the sheer venality.