Come on, leo777: There was no ambiguity whatsoever. I'm not talking about whether Iraq had any weapons; I'm talking about whether the continental United States of America was under imminent physical threat from said weapons. NOBODY thought that, except for the sheep who consume right-wing media exclusively. At the time there was all kinds of talk about "preemptive war," an expression that was exposed as a misnomer (also at the time) b/c that would suggest that we were about to be attacked, which it was clear was not true.

Hillary made a political calculation to sign the (outrageously timed) bill because she figured a war was going to happen anyway, that it was going to be won handily, and that for a future run for Presidency she needed to be seen as both "patriotic" and tough on defense, two perceptions that would suffer if she could be laughingly pointed at as the small-minded politician who resisted the "free and democratic US ally that Iraq is now." That outcome didn't happen of course.

There are two glaring flaws with her seemingly expedient choice that we need to decide how much to hold her accountable for:

1. Her judgment, which turned out to be wrong. (I mean about the aftermath of the war, which she misjudged as badly as Bush. There are too many people on record with perfectly accurate predictions of the chaos; Barak Obama and Ted Kennedy come to mind, but there are many others.) Nobody gets everything right, of course, so this one's up for grabs. If you can get beyond the morality of it to begin with (I can't), then you need only focus on whether or not she should have foreseen the messy aftermath.

2. Her triangulation (pandering, selling out, whatever you want to call the thing that pols do when they say what they don't believe just to get elected.)

My husband, among others, doesn't have as much of a problem with No. 2 as I do, b/c he thinks she is a compromiser the way any business or political leader must be. I tend to prefer honesty above all else, which is why I admire Kucinich, Ron Paul, even Pat Buchanan: At least you know where they stand and you trust them to tell you who they are. My husband would say they can afford that kind of honesty b/c they have nothing to lose and as soon as they become viable they will begin to triangulate with the best of them. We'll see how Obama does with this. I still mostly believe what he says.

Let's not pretend that her Iraq vote wasn't a political calculation. Her more recent vote about Iran is more of the same. She knows that she needs to seem like a military hard-ass to overcome the Woman and Democrat labels. I'm not saying don't vote for her; I'm saying, let's figure out if she has so thoroughly sold out that she will actually adopt these principles if elected. It's like the whole "suppress the media" thing she has going on now: NPR's ON THE MEDIA reported that she withholds future access to herself or interviews with Bill if she doesn't like the press she's getting from a particular outlet; that looks a lot like the Bush approach. Her previous persecution explains her paranoia, but we need a secret sign that she's going to be completely transparent with the public--and stop all the triangulating and media tyranny--the minute she's elected.

I'm tired of the old "electability" argument. People should be able to vote their conscience. A runoff election is long overdue in our country. Why not a grassroots movement for that instead of everybody holding their nose and voting for second or third best b/c they "have a chance"?

Hillary's OK. Obama's the real deal.

Noonan's fawning over Bush's anti-intellectualism is just embarrassing. His "average Joe" quality--which can be loosely translated to "inferior cognitive ability," which can be loosely blamed for his simplistic world view, his inattentive and incurious personality, his reductive and inflexible policy positions, his parochial interests, and his overall stunning lack of competence--has led the United States directly into the foreign policy morass in which we find ourselves.

I don't actually believe Pegs agrees with what she's saying. (Or at least, she would not value such "average-ness" in a Democrat.) While I don't consider her intellect anything close to that of, say, George Will or Bill Kristol or even Pat Buchanan--I think she, like they, have been plugging their noses as they reach into the furthest recesses of their brains to find something--anything--to say that sounds remotely positive about the dolt in the White House. Surely they will be nothing but relieved when someone else becomes the Republican candidate to carry water for. Not one of the candidates running, on either side, presents the same problem for the right-wing media that George W. Bush has. He is singularly inappropriate as President of the United States. Noonan is foolish to have allowed her support for such a woefully unqualified man to go down into recorded history.

OF COURSE I know that Buchanan and Will have criticized Bush for not being conservative enough; I was merely pointing out that they occasionally have felt the need to "carry water" for him (as Rush so eloquently put his support for Republicans he really didn't believe in). Kristol, I would add, has been more critical than Will. The larger point is that this starry-eyed fawning for the "average Joe" in the White House was a real reach into the bottom of the positive barrel and probably painful for Noonan.