Well, in a sense. I bet that 90% of their visitors after the first three days navigated there from salon.com/greenwald/something_or_other.html . They should send you a free Victory Button for boosting their numbers!

One of the few things that has kept the Victory Caucus on life support over the past two weeks is that Gen. J.C. Christian developed an (understandable) addiction to mocking it, and when he would do that, he would link to it, and I wil bet that there are many days over the past few weeks when at least half of that site's traffic were from people clicking on his links. That's one of the reasons I stopped for awhile. I didn't want to feel like I was artificially intervening in the end-of-life process of the Victory Caucus by sticking a feeding tube in its stomach instead of letting it perish with whatever dignity it could muster.

I'm guessing you meant "heroine," not "heroin."

I saw that and changed it, but before I did, I realized it would actually work both ways.

"Incentivized?" Aaargh, ow, wince! Maybe, "has an incentive" would be better? Please?

Sorry, no. "Incentivized?" is a perfectly fine word and there is no reason to resort to the clunkier "has an incentive."

My little blog [ gets those types of numbers on a good day, and I only write about Pittsburgh politics, policy analysis, and football.... wow there must be a massive and silent majority of demand for more festering if this victory caucus is the proof of national opinions

I know you were joking, but I do want to be clear about one thing. A blog that has 1,000 daily readers or even 500 daily readers is a potent weapon. Most people never obtain the ability to express their views to 500 people every day, and if someone has a blog with those kinds of numbers, that is an impressive achievement even if it never increases.

The point here is not to mock the Victory Caucus' traffic stats except to the extent that its lying advocates screamed to the world that its success (and, by effect, the bulging, hidden pro-war sentiment in this country) was proven by the massive traffic numbers the site compiled in its early days. They made traffic stats the metric to use to determine the worth and success of this site. The collapse of those numbers is significant for that reason.

To them, just like we argued that the blogger issue was a stifling of free expression, so too can those wanting to rabble-rouse on the right categorize what we are doing (like here, with AC’s article) as suppressing her right to disseminate her views (and in a private, non-taxpayer) format.

Who argued that the demand that Edwards fired his bloggers was "a stifling of free expression"? That's just inane. There is a fundamental difference between (a) condemning an idea and demanding that someone disassociate themselves from it and (b) "stifling free expression." And that's true no matter who is making the demands.

The issue with the Edwards bloggers wasn't that the demands that they be fired were an attempt to "stifle free expression." The issue is that the people who were pretending to find their writings so outrageous belong to a political movement which is based on behavior just like that and far, far worse.

Personally, I agree that the best solution to repulsive ideas is to highlight them and attack them, not try to force them to be concealed. But to complain that someone has associated themselves with reprehensible or dangerous ideas has nothing to do with "stifling of free expression."

"Free expression" never means that a person has the right to express their views free of criticism or protest.

Yet another typically facile post from Greenwald.

In case anyone ever wants to find "David," just mention the word "Israel" and he will magically appear. If you don't want to hear from him, talk about any other political issue and you will never hear from him.

He read this long post about many issues and concluded that my goal is to demand that the U.S. abandon Israel as an ally, even though I said nothing of the kind (and how odd to simultaneously accuse me of writing a post bereft of susstance yet at the same time calling for a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy).

There are a lot of people who don't mind that the U.S. is becoming more and more despised around the world -- in every country and on every continent -- now eclipsing even North Korea, because they see that as a worthwile price to pay for blindly supporting the only country about which they really care.

"...until the enemy is destroyed"

That is totalitarian logic. We can set aside what Cheney's motivations are; and also what his level of sincerity is.

Fighting until this shadowy, elusive enemy is destroyed is what led to totalitarianism. To truly understand this, you need to be able not just to see what Orwell meant when he wrote WAR IS PEACE, but you need to be able to see and feel why his antagonists actually believed it.

Exactly. The goal is by definition impossible, so declaring that we will wage war until it's achieved means Permanent War. As Hofstadter wrote:

This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid's sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

They see every suicide bomb, ever attack, even every new bin Laden video, as proof that they have to redouble their warmongering efforts, which in turn produced more suicide bombs, more attacks, etc., which in turn causes them to redouble their warmongering efforts, etc. ad infinitum.