The weekend before my 'comrade' died, he told me he was weary of suffering. The canned Budweiser beer was not quenching his thirst like it use to, and he'd upchuck from his his guts until he'd bleed. Pain was reaching the maximum endurance level. His wife and children gave him permission to die. He was okay and needed peace and rest.

You take 'em to the wall, Glenn. Para la gente!

Thanks Glenn, for digging in on this.

Over at Firedoglake this morning they were discussing this topic and one poster jayackroyd I though put it very nicely.

"What dooms Joe to continue making this kind of mistake is he starts from the premise that everything is partisan; he’s bought into the republican meme that there are no facts, only politics. So he thinks his job is to listen to the spin of operatives on both sides, weigh them carefully, and then decide which side’s spin is more accurate."

I only disagree that Joe carefully weighs the argument, he listens to the Repub's spin on the topic and weighs it against the Republican spin of the Dem's position.

Joe's problem is he comes up with the story idea first and then selects the facts around it. In this case one of the stories characters is the "feminized, antiwar, politically correct Democratic Party"

So in order to support the notion of weak-on-defense Democrats it become necessay to manufacture evidence to support the charge. Hmm, where I have I seen this scenario played out before? hmmm...

Oh yeah! I Remember! That's how we got into Iraq in the first place!

(I also posted this one at Swampland)

W.T., Spiro would dare now call you a damn hippie? That Ocean City, Maryland real estate tycoon crook. Creep.

R.M.P., thanks- El Cid- you reminded me of the coffee table size Look magazine by Luce? I get all confused. I have a yard-sale old 60's copy of Diem's South Vietnamese cronies dressed in traditional, colorful aldai's (sp) dress and waving American flags to pronounce how happy the corrupt South was for the American invasion. I remember reading how pro-war murderous ones back then, handed out American flags for the photo-op snap-shot. Another bloody war Time pretence-Lie. Deaths.

Well, needlesstosay- thanks for lifting the veil. This group of GOP will be proved vain too, and fail. Light always shines in the dark. A glimmer. A candle wick. A spark to lead us all along.

Keep glowing.

A light at the candle tip.

When our bones and joints ache a bit, all-and-more, 'our' eyes behold the beauty of the Light. Keep exposing the war-GOP's who are all inured and dripping wet in red blood. As a adders venom is vile, they sleep in a proverbial snake pit. They are so proud, haughty, and only falsely exalt their evil self-duelings.

Delusion.

Glenn, and others, you help (me/them) humanity to admit how dark and lost, and hell-bent a human may go astray. If they, THEM, had an iota of decency, the war-proxy-killers would thank you and weep. They beguile. They lay a snare. Magnify the crimes so all can see. It is patriotism. It's beautiful.

W.T., you a good old hippo. Did you ever see such a preposterous site as two grinning hippos making love at a zoo? Pedinska, forgive me?

Nay? No be too confused.

I want to climb that backyard bannana tree some day. Don't invite a Timberman. He may cut it down like a nasty woodsman, and clothe himself with banana-tree-bark and big green leaf.

He barks like a good bow-wow hippie.

... like me, [Klein] can't decipher the ultimate consequences of the legislation in question. It's one thing to spin legislation as doing one thing, and quite something else to see what happens in practice. What a law "says" is beside the point, what it "does" is often different. -- shooter242

What "happens in practice" has less than nothing to do with Klein's factual errors in his column last week, and nothing to do with his pitiable wrigglings since then. Glenn's post of 11/21 targets and exposes very specific lies about the text of this proposed legislation. Those lies were put out by Joe Klein in a still influential mainstream print publication. To the best of my knowledge, they remain under-acknowledged and uncorrected as of 9:30 a.m. CST. Because these false statements remain uncorrected in the print edition, it is reasonable to ask if it was (and is) Time's intention to knowingly mislead the public on this matter.

Klein got it wrong! Just admit it. -- Orlando

Sorry, that issue will remain open until courts rule on it. But I'm sure it won't pass, so all this is speculation. -- shooter242

Ah, no. Glenn showed that Klein misrepresented this piece of legislation. He did so by quoting the plain English text of the proposed bill. Klein got it wrong. He misrepresented the meaning of the text of the bill.

I'll go my own way. If it doesn't suit you, feel free to skip my posts. -- shooter242

We wouldn't dream of ignoring you, m'dear. Wouldn't want to validate your sense of victimhood, you know. ;)

Any reporter writing for a mainstream weekly who serves as a national pontificator still needs to base his grand opinions on facts observed on assignment.

Otherwise, he is writing some sort of fiction, or maybe, a piece of "new journalism"; and if he is, he should pitch it to editors of more stylized publications.

Joe Klein may think he's evolving into a "Mailer," but he should know who he's writing for.

If he is "evolving," maybe he should quit Time, and Time should stop indulging him.

Right now, he does seem to be tap dancing very fast.

You got a license for them poetics, son? ;-)

With the FISA bill, the Congress should decide what the limits should be, and hand it to the intelligence people instead of negotiating with them.

And the circle continues. Another good example is the Torricelli theory that spies for us should be of good moral character. Philosophically lovely. As a practicality, just stupid.

No, actually its a good example of the theory that spies should not be asked to make moral decisions. Congress is sworn to uphold the Constitution, they should uphold it. They get to tell the spies what to do. They shouldn't be letting the spies tell them what to do. They can ask the spies for expert testimony, they can ask the spies for risk assessments. But asking spies for help deciding on the fundamental rights of Americans is lunatic. That's real realpolitik, the other is action movie junk.

Iraq differs from 9/11 in that it was not a complex system. It was a nation state with discernable actions, with an accountable head of state, which was responsive to diplomacy, and whose goals were not difficult to discern. We were interested, at least so we were told, in them not having or using weapons of mass destruction. Clear goal, clear agenda, not a complex system.

But the more the Bush administration's "rationale", if that's what you want to call it, for fighting the war evolves, the more it becomes obvious that perhaps the neocons are a complex system. Kinda like al Qaeda, only in government. Their principal aims seem to have been to strike fear and terror in the rest of the world so they would admit the ultimate and fundamental supremacy of the United States. Those are the goals of a terrorist organization, not a nation state. Throwing little countries against the wall, torturing wives until their husbands turn themselves in, threatening carpets of bombs, praying for genocide against the infidels -- all instruments of terror.

Maybe it's time we started opposing terrorist organizations, starting with al Neocon.