Let us also take note of the bizarre fact that the Rules of Seriousness seem to allow someone to run around talking about attacking, invading, and bombing everyone except for the people who actually attacked us on 9/11

The various places where I've seen criticism of Obama's staements they've always suggested that to speak publicly about such things is harmful to Musharraf in his effort to not offend the militant Muslims who occupy his country.

The last time I checked the word for that was called appeasement! Instead of an epithet, it has now become a badge of honor among all the serious types.

On his way to another point WT said this:

Their lack of interest has been assiduously cultivated by the experts, and look where that has gotten us.

I'm personally proud of the amount of TV I avoid watching (pretty much all of it) but the fact remains that humans are programmable devices and a lot of thought and effort goes into shaping patterns of behavior that are most beneficial to franchise holders, chain stores and other advertisers. The fact that political discourse degenerates as a result is just a beneficial side effect.

All I had to do was actually parse the statements being made to justify the invasion and I could tell they were lies from the word choices alone. It isn't difficult.

But even if those who voted for it (and have since expressed regret for their vote) did not do any research, did not examine their premises, did not look at the character of the people urging them on>

While I'm not going to sit here and exclaim that 9-11 changed everything, I will point out that it did make a lot of people who were reasonably secure suddenly feel helpless. There was a lot of importance to the idea that we DO SOMETHING even if what we did didn't bear any particular relationship to the causes of our discomfort. Whenever the subject comes up, I always like to remind people what happened to the Dixie Chicks. The reaction to Natalie Maines's comment can be described many ways but rational is not among them.

We were led into Iraq because at the time we were ready to be led anywhere and Bushco saw an opportunity in our confusion. To this day, they're still trying to exploit the confusion (see AQ vs AQI) but we're slowly waking up and people aren't buying it anymore.

What evidence is there that it accomplishes anything beyond giving psychopaths their fix?

Don't underestimate the importance of this. Everyone has experienced morbid fantasies. Very few get to actually live them out on a government paycheck. My feeling is that GW and Cheney and Tenet and the others who signed off on this, did so because they didn't want to think they had shortchanged any possibility of preventing another attack and of course as a sort of revenge for getting caught with their pants down on 9-11. They don't think about the details and don't want to know about them. The people who actually do the grunt-work of tormenting the prisoners on the other hand simply get the privelege of living out their most gruesome fantasies and get a paycheck and accolades for the effort.

What's going to become of those people when they retire?

The mind reels.......

Maybe this particular anonymous's being an absolute flaming asshole will encourage other anonymouses to get handles lest they're mistaken for him.

Not trusting Congress with secrets.

In a similar vein, one shouldn't tell the police when one witnesses a burglary because they can't be trusted to keep it a secret either. Shooter and the constitution have only a passing aquantance. Enumerated powers - not too important. Why should we need to adhere to our founding document if the Fuhrer oops I mean the President finds it inconvenient.

I would be interested in seeing polling data as to what percentage of American realize that our invasion has resulted in the displacement of four million human beings, the deaths of "at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians" (and, indirectly, many more), and "severe hardship" suffered by at least 8 million Iraqis.

As we all know there is a concerted effort on the part of CNN, ABC, NYT (not to even mention FOX)and to a certain extent WaPo to paint the war as a noble struggle that can only acheive victory with continous (read andless) effort. There is also a concerted effort on the part of the RW Noise Machine to portray the media coverage as an endless series of bad reports which fail to portray the noble struggle.

In the meantime what people actually believe is affected far more by their own attitudes then by the particulars of the information they receive from afar. This is where the process of moral dissonance and denial kicks in. The degree to which people were enthusiastic about the war in the run up (and trust me - there was a lot of enthusiasm that people are trying hard to forget) is the degree to which they still need to supress information which reveals just how evil the results of the invasion have been.

Did it occur to anyone that the US intervention drove virtually no one out of that country, that the insurgency, our enemies, did.

Let's see, invade the country....check. March straight past everything to get Bagdhad...check. Stop briefly at a massive cache of conventional explosives and then march right past without securing the site....check. Decapitate the government and disolve the only organized amred force sending everyone to the unemploymenty line....check. Start going house to house terrorizing anyone we think might be hiding arms or thinking ill of our soldiers.....check. Collect people at random and put them in the same prison used by Saddam and subject them to sexual humiliation.....check.

Nope. WE don't bear ANY responsibility for the insurgency. The Iraqi's should be grateful. After all the were only SURGICAL air strikes. It's not OUR fault.

How sick can you get?