Your kidding right? I would agree that he was plunged into the situation, but we are going on 6 months under his leadership. You mean to tell me he has NO fault in the "massive war-making state"?

The U.S. National Security State has been built up over six decades and is firmly entrenched through all sorts of mechanisms. It's totally unreasonable to think that Obama would -- or even could -- dismantle it in nine months, even if he wanted.

I'm not saying he's free of blame for the actions he's actually taken. But to say, less than a year into his presidency, that he is to blame because America is an empire and a war state - things that began before he was born - is irrational in the extreme.

The second one was that this might be a good day to find a radio station with Rush Limbaugh on.

I don't think the Right's reaction will be particularly unpredictable or entertaining. They're accustomed to mocking the Nobel Peace Prize as a left-wing, European sham -- they have plenty of practice doing that from Jimmy Carter and Yassir Arafat's awards, among others.

They'll just claim that he got it because he's surrendering to America's enemies.

I heard it while on the road this evening and nearly slammed into the car in front, I was so pissed.

Oh, great - I was hoping to be able to write about it just based on the written article, not having to subject myself to listening to the segment. You just ruined that plan.

If anyone would like to see a vivid example of what I meant when I talked about the value of the comment section to me, see CarolynC's post above about that NPR story, which not only contains some extremely insightful analysis and excellent writing, but also has provided me with a major topic to write about tomorrow.

I apologize for my impatience. Is there a problem?

This isn't going to be done. To do it, one would have to delete each message, one after the next, and that would take a lot of time. I'm not going to spend any time on this at all.

You're welcomed here. I think your input can be valuable even when it's scathingly critical of what I'm doing. But I'm not going to allow the same message over and over from anyone -- day after day, regardless of what's posted here. It's just spam. I know - you think Accountability Now is worthless, dumb, counter-productive - like pretty much everything. We all get it. Feel free to write about that when that's the topic. But posting that every day, over and over and over and over, no matter the topic, is just tiresome.

And I'm definitely not going to leave up posts endlessly complaining and arguments about whether a particular deletion is fair, justifiable, etc. Nothing is worse than having to read that.

With respect, have you seen the photos or haven't you? If not, how can you claim to know what they "depict"? Yes, their existence has been referenced by litigation, but if I am remembering correctly, they have never been produced in evidence.

One more time: the factual claims I made about the photos (regarding to their subject matter and what they depict) don't require me to have seen them. They are statements about which all parties in these litigations -- including ones who have seen them -- do not dispute and, in fact, affirm. There is no dispute about that from anyone.

someone please refresh my memory as to why we shouldn't treat the trolls in Glenn's comment section with the potty mouthed disdain they deserve.

"Troll" is a term that doesn't have much meaning - people use it to mean different things -- but to me, it simply refers to people who are here not to contribute, but to disrupt, vent petty personal grievances, or otherwise draw attention to themselves. It does NOT mean: "someone who has views different than me or most of those here."

For such people - "trolls" as I defined them - the far superior course is to ignore them. Treating them with "potty mouth disdain" means the comment sections becomes cluttered with substance-free, junior high insult fests that drain the energy and time of people who don't want to read that (including me).

Greenwald has kept from us one of his most impressive super-hero powers. Even though he hasn't actually seen the photos, he both knows what they show and what their larger significance is.

All parties, including the Government, acknowledge that the photos are from numerous detention facilities outside of Abu Ghraib. Their categories were confirmed by litigation and referenced by courts. The factual statements I made about the photos are not in dispute and therefore are the opposite of claims that Iran only reported to the IAEA because they learned they had been caught red-handed -- a statement for which there is no evidence and which has been denied by the Iranians, who claimed they voluntarily disclosed.