have been reading the Slate pieces as they appeared, and today’s addition, by Timothy Noah (http://www.slate.com/id/2187008/) seems to be of a slightly different tone. He seems to have reassessed war as a policy tool, to at least some degree. And, more impressively, he decries the common practice of continuing to pay a great deal of attention to those ‘who were wrong,’ while continuing to mostly ignore those ‘who got it right.’

General Odom was another. The smart guys who were right from the start are getting impatient.

Bush is still "sure" about Iraq.

The president is still "sure." You can see that in the scowling demeanor. You can hear it in the taut voice, the twangy folksiness of the voice, so reminiscent of one of the "characters" in "No Country for Old Men."

As I write this, I hear Obama in the background. He is speaking at Fayetteville with "Iron Mike's" statue lurking in the background at Ft. Bragg. "Iron Mike" is the archtypical enlisted paratrooper. Obama says that he is going to withdraw from Iraq. Bush says that there will be no more serious withdrawals unless the generals on the ground say there should be. Guess what that means. That means an "endless war," in Obama's phrase. Generals don't vote to take responsibility for national policy decisions. They are by nature, and the nature of the process that made them generals, far too risk averse for that. If a decision to make war or not to make war is left to them they will pretty much always vote for the status quo.

Bush's Pentagon speech today contained no time line for the evolution of the war. War without end, Amen. How long before the American people start to walk away from "Iron Mike" in disgust? The applause for Bush at the Pentagon today will be remembered. I remember a time when my friend Mike could not walk down the street wearing his uniform. I do not want to see that again.

Bush, perhaps deliberately, dances, bobs, weaves and scowls over the identity of the enemy, and the reasons that he and the Jacobin neocons gave us for going to war. Much of that argumentation has been "exploded" by the failure to find it anywhere other than in the pages of rags like "The Weekly Standard" but that does not seem to bother him.

The Vice President seems as insulated from reality as always and absolutely shameless in his public denials of reality in Iraq. What's the deal with him? Is he really impaired somehow or is it about the money as the "oilies" insist?

Then, there is John McCain. He does seem impaired. Lieberman had to remind him that AQ is a Sunni group who hate the government of Iran?

The Democrats need to sober up and get Hillary and Obama onto the same ticket. I don't care who gets the top spot.

"Iron Mike" and his buddies deserve to be led by some one other than fools and knaves.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2008/03/bush-is-still-s.html

It's that the people who we wish would love us, don't.

You almost sounded like you had a point to contribute.

Sadly, it turnout to be methane from the colon, which is just being rude.

Whose media?

Don't Americans know about used car salesmen?

What about ordinary, decent, human restraint?

Where was that?

1) The 'traditional media'. Cable and Network News, Newspapers, etc. After all, this was before the true advent of blog-influence.

2) Difference: Car Salesmen operate on trying to make you feel smart.

The war was sold on Fear and Revenge. Two much more powerful tools than ego-stroking. Boogeymen and convenient straw targets. By successfully inflating the threat of Iraq, conflating them with those who attacked us on 9/11, and effectively silencing those with valid objections, the shine of inevitability was placed on the war. Those who were for it were for it big and loud. Those who were against it either had no place to voice it, or simply gave up due to 'inevitability'.

3) Human restraint is all well and good, but if you don't have the power to implement it, then it's useless. The Administration convinced the most important people it needed to: Congress.

“They hate us because we don’t even know why they hate us.”

Michael O'Hanlon and Joe Klein. Is it known whether they were asked to submit columns or in fact are going to be part of the series? I suspect neither of them is willing to even admit they were wrong, so submitting a column in the series is out of the question for them.

For that matter, why should you, Aych? Not to pick on you personally, as your question is a reasonable one, not to mention one which is repeated over and over by cynic and realist alike. Still....

The point is that neither your convictions nor mine cost us anything. Despite the purity and steadfastness of those convictions, neither you nor I could get elected dogcatcher. This is actually fortunate, since it leaves us free to perform the role we are playing.

Obama's role -- the role of any presidential candidate -- is different, and you and I aren't their only potential constituency. Tell me that you'd just as soon vote for no one, given that no one will say everything you want to hear, and I won't pursue this any further. Otherwise, it seems to me that it's incumbent on you to explain how you would manage the twin obligations of 1) getting elected, and 2) effectively pursuing policy changes which might lead to righting what you understand to be wrong.

"The past years have seen us both shamed and threatened by the implications of the Berkeleyan attitude, from Burma to Rwanda to Darfur. Had we decided to attempt the right thing in those cases (you will notice that I say "attempt" rather than "do," which cannot be known in advance), we could as glibly have been accused of embarking on "a war of choice." But the thing to remember about Iraq is that all or most choice had already been forfeited. We were already deeply involved in the life-and-death struggle of that country, and March 2003 happens to mark the only time that we ever decided to intervene, after a protracted and open public debate, on the right side and for the right reasons. This must, and still does, count for something."