One of these friends even went so far as to lecture me on my emotionally "unhealthy" anger at the Bush administration for what I perceived as their lying.

Ahh. Bringing up the memories. I went to a conference in January 2002 and during the coffee break I said something critical of Bush. Two people from Back East pulled me aside, and in low voice asked me to be careful what I said in such a public place, they feared for my safety. They really meant it, too, they were scared.

I'm glad you were able to make "lucky" guesses. I guess my point is that there's no real excuse for politicians and the media to have to have made guesses in the first place. All the points that were made for war were already being refuted in the foreign press. I don't think even most Brits believed in the cause of war as much as they believed in Tony Blair.

There couldn't have been a huge program for WMD in Iraq, Saddam obviously had nothing to do with the 9-11 terrorists...the list goes on. I just don't understand why more people who had access to information didn't say anything about it. The truth can be a powerful cudgel at times.

I believe, although I'm not speaking for him, that Glenn's reading on the domestic spying is based upon the extremely loose requirement that the government "believe" that a subject is overseas. Furthermore, that the "government" in this case is none other than that sterling example of integrity, Alberto Hisownself, only strengthens Glenn's argument.

Add to that, the fact that the only oversight of Alberto's activities in this arena will be performed by Alberto Hisownself and you'll better understand where he's coming from.

"doveriai, no proveriai"

...(who happens to vote as a Democrat), was SHOCKED that I could think (so early on) that there was anything GWB could have done to prevent 9/11.

yes, I was aware of that. anonymous liberal and balkin seem to hold the same view. I simply pointed to an apparent lack of agreement with drational.

One of my favorite lines from Rees's satirical post is this one:

Winston Churchill is Leonardo daVinci. George W. Bush is Thomas Kinkade. Michael Ignatieff basically helped us buy a half-trillion dollars' worth of Thomas Kinkade paintings. Thanks.

That is so true. At least the part equating Bush with Kinkade. If only because they probably have a lot of fans in common.

I was also a bit disturbed by Ignatieff's equating politicians with artists, not because I think it's impossible, but just that it's not likely enough to merit such a blanket statement.

And Rees cut right to the heart of it.

Finally, they do not need to go through tenure review which, despite right-wing canards to the contrary, is a fairly rigid procedure that has a better track record of weeding out frauds and phonies than the rules that seem to govern the think tank world.

In short, think tank "scholars" demand the kind of deference that they very rarely extend to actual scholars working in mainline academic settings.

But I suppose pointing out the hypocrisy of the Very Serious is hardly an original observation. After all, Glenn, day in and day out you do the unglorious work of exposing our Wise Men for the fools they really are.

Just thought I, a resident of the world of academics, would toss on this additional observation on the "thinking" of the "think" tanks.

I was with you up until the tenure thing. Can you tell me, oh resident, how often your particular institution accepts a person with a degree and oh, say, 15 years of non-academic experience (I'm making them over 40) to a tenure track entry level academic job? (Don't say if they have a good publication record, the fresh out of school applicants don't have that either.) How about to a post-doc?

Can you tell me why people from the government can get faculty jobs who have never held them before, at elite institutions, and why academic "schools" like the Johns Hopkins Paul Nitze School for Advanced International Studies can revolve from government to think tanks to academia with no accounting for their credentials, no checks and balances, no "weeding out the frauds and phonies", no tenure review?

I agree that there are many think tank scholars that do not deserve the title, and that there is a higher proportion of real scholars in academic institutions. But there are also scholars in academia that do not deserve the title, and think tank scholars who do, and quite possibly some of the latter work where they work because academia would not consider them -- not because they don't do good work, but because they don't fit the paradigm. Academia has produced some real whoppers, and "Serious" scholars, too.

These people don't seem to exist in the real world, although they fancy themselves as realists in the mode of Henry Kissinger. The damage Kissinger did is still with us, and with people like Robert and Fred Kagan and the rest of the foreign policy community running things, it's not likely we'll ever get started repairing the damage.

The problem is that they listen only to each other. It's incestuous. A closed loop. They emerge from their high castle to patiently educate us morons about the true nature of human civilization and the resulting absolute requirement that we be hard-nosed, pre-emptive, and aggressive. "We know what's best for the world," they say. "We have Ph.D.s! So just sit back and let us handle this mess."

Robert is one of the founders of Project for the New American Century. Just that name alone should give one pause: So now we're taking ownership of centuries? He deigned to share his vision of America's role in the world recently in the L.A. Times. It's chilling.

The singular personal aspect about the Kagans and their ilk is that they cannot be reached with any other vision of reality and geopolitics. They're impervious. There is something seriously wrong - psychologically - with people who cannot seriously consider alternatives to their points of view.

But the worst thing is not their self-imposed isolation, founded on an unwarranted sense of superiority. No. The worst thing is that they have power. Power in the hands of such people is a fearsome thing, and always has catastrophic consequences.