Clarence Darrow:

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.

John Philpot Curran:

It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt. (1790)

Pray tell where in the above quotes it says that maintaining the world's biggest military is the key to maintaining freedom?

A yes response would be logically equivalent to the antinomy of Epimenides the Cretan (a.k.a. Russell's paradox, A = {X|X∉X}, is A∈A?).

But it'd be interesting, especially the part about "Remember, you are under oath."

It amazes me. This administration is FAMOUS for portraying those who oppose the war as traitors, unpatriotic, and friends of the enemy but their loyal followers are just "outraged" at this ad. It's so rediculous, my head is going to explode.

This is going to put the Democrats on the defensive. . . . The ad was, on its face, morally and politically outrageous. . . . But the substance (or lack of it) will be subsumed by the slander: It is no small thing to accuse a military man of betraying his country. It is also palpably untrue in this case. Whoever cooked up this ad is guilty of a disgraceful act of malicious puerility. . . .

Considering Klein's track record , it was obviously the EXACT right thing to do.

Wow! I apologize.

I (obviously from the content) meant Max Cleland. Not Saxby Chambliss. Big difference.

Again, I apologize.

Here's the question I would like to have heard posed to the general: "Sir, if you believed that lying to the American people would help you succeed with regard to your mission in Iraq, would you lie?"

Thanks to Mr. Greenwald for yet another penetrating and yes, discomforting article. It’s a rare voice these days that can inject both rigor and meaning into the discourse about our current government. I have to admit that lately I’ve been leaning toward “Send in the Clowns”.

Way back when - there was another rhyming General under attack by an anti-war movement (vs. anti war crowd). Remember General Waste More Land, a man who took “scorched earth” to places the Sherman, in his grave, can only dream about. That meager linguistic spitball provoked no interest because there was REAL PROTEST GOING ON IN THE STREETS - the 60's version of "stick and stones.....but words will never hurt me”.

Now all the right wing war profiteers have to do is wait around while the "liberals" periodically summon just enough courage to raise their voices while DOING NOTHING! As we can see from the Congressional failure and collapse from January through today, the left tires very quickly. It must, never having recovered the moral musculature still atrophied from disuse during the "me generation". A 200,000 member "blog" will NEVER look like 200,000 people marching to Washington. The difference between dissent and protest is the same as buying TV time or capturing it! How soon we forget.

The only requirement for this criminal Administration to increase it's stranglehold on the throat of democracy is to pause every now and again, look down at the prone corpse of real political ACTION and PROTEST, and just give the body (in this case, MoveOn) a couple of good kicks to make sure it stays dead.

GG writes: "The only difference this time... is that it is being directed at the side that typically wields such accusatory rhetoric, rather than by them."

The exact same phenomenon accounts for the recent Republican revulsion (expressed succinctly by Michael Medved among others) at Larry Craig's bathroom advances. Sexual harassment is the coin of the realm among these manly types (witness Tim Russet's "Lean a little closer to the camera" antics) -- but they must NEVER, EVER be on the receiving end of it. It would contradict their beliefs about who holds the power in this world.

"They have no business leading men and women into maiming and death if they make this choice."

It seems to me the problem that we have businessmen sending to men and women into maiming and death. Not so much leading.

Great post.

Authoritarianism. It has certainly been on the rise, but since 2001, it has reached critical strength. It's do or die time.

-- is almost always in bad taste. And, as we know, such a fairly minor misstep is all it takes to unleash the foaming dogs of synthetic outrage and coordinated overreaction. So, (IMHO) MoveOn blundered, but not for the reasons you'll be hearing on Fox News.

I've been reading GG for more than a year now and, without doubt, this is the best post I have read.

Bravo!

Something that stands out clearly, especially since the occupation of Iraq:whenever I express my opposition to the occupation to a Right winger, I'm automatically accused of being a hater of my own country, I want my country to be defeated and I support "Islamofascism". You would think that in the San Francisco Bay area, probably the most progressive and open minded area in the US (hack, we don't have even one Republican Congressional or state representative in the Bay area), Conservatives would at least assume that there's a possibility that opposing the war does not equate being a traitor and enemy of your own country, but no-unless you support the occupation and Bush and all of his shenanigans wholeheartedly, you are a despicable traitor.

One thing that I think is lost with all the fur flying, is that the conservatives and Glenn both are making an assumption that MoveOn.org and "the Democrats" are one and the same group. That is clearly not the case, as I doubt Obama and Clinton were consulted before the ad was placed. The democratic presidential candidates can't be hitched to every remark from every liberal organization or blog in the country.

I'm happy with Move On; they are at least taking a stand which is more than we can say about the Democrats in congress.