Glenn:

Please, please give this line from Newsweek editor Jon Meacham your treatment:

"I think there’s a kind of Bush-bashing fatigue out there."

This is regarding the suppression of news coverage of Vincent Bugliosi's new book, "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder."

Whoa. Where to start? There's the Bush criticism = Bush bashing formulation where Meacham shows how casually he adopts Republican formulations and discards Bush criticisms. Then there's the abandonment of the Fifth Estate's duties.

Give `em hell, Glenn.

Link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/business/media/07bugliosi.html

You can dispute whether or not a given action is a crime- but that doesn't require anyone else to grant the action the "benefit of the doubt". Especially not as a Constiutional protection.

Actually it does. In a US court the burden of proof is on the state, not the defendant. But Glenn doesn't bother with procedure. To Glenn, those guilty are the ones he declares guilty. Exactly the kind of thing he protests.

Under free speech, I presume Glenn has the right to label people and actions, criminals and crimes, without having to prove anything. But honesty would dictate that he make it clear he's not saying something factual. Surely you can't argue with that?

And Glenn's comments did NOT single out anyone by name in the statement you excerpted. It was you who brought up George W. Bush (aka "the President.)

True enough, but here you are defending someone that feels free to declare people criminals just because he feels like it. Perhaps you just fell off the turnip truck, but I can say with surety that he's not talking about the Sierra Club.

Passive-aggresive whine overruled, shooter.-- cabdriver

Get used to it, you'll be seeing the word "alleged" quite a bit from now on. In the interests of fairness and honesty, don't you know.

Then you and I see eye-to-eye. I especially like the way you put it:

If this were discussed accurately, I think americans would oppose Obama position and support a full withdrawal.

Well put and this is what I think, too. I'm sorry that I misconstrued that part in responding to your comment.

I don't consider myself part of anyone's "left-wing base." My views on some issues are at odds with the Democratic Party. I have voted for Reagan, Perot, Dole and Kerry (among others). Ron Paul's honesty and consistent anti-war, pro-privacy stances got my vote in this year's primary, although I would have chosen Edwards if he'd still been running. I plan to vote for Sen. Obama in November, in part because he has said U.S. combat troops will be out of Iraq in a reasonable period of time.

The war in Iraq has turned out to be a bigger mistake than the Vietnam war, with more far-reaching consequences. There is no way to "win." Lake a bad marriage, business partnership or investment, we have to take the loss, patch things up as best we can and get out. There's no point in pouring good money after bad. Tragically, this mistake has cost thousands of lives.

As a child, I didn't "get" why President Nixon kept troops in Vietnam, which I understood to be Johnson's war. Now I see that there is a stubborn political establishment that transcends party, and really doesn't care about the good - or the wishes - of the American people.

The 2008 election is likely to be decided by Americans concerned about the economy - but only because they've already made up their minds against the war. If there are still 40,000 (to pick a random number) U.S. troops in Iraq in November 2010, Pres. Obama and the Democratic Congress will have more than a disgusted left-wing base to worry about; they'll have a fresh crop of Republican opponents calling them liars.

The last time: Those two statements are not exactly equivalent.

Preferring policy based on the facts on the ground over blind adherence to a campaign promise is not the same as not wanting to withdraw troops from Iraq within 16 months. Policy based on the facts on the ground can be exactly the same as a policy of withdrawing the troops within 16 months if you believe that the facts on the ground support withdrawing within 16 months.

The polling data do not support the notion that the American people do not want the troops withdrawn within 16 months, but Liasson never claimed that the American people do not want withdrawal within 16 months. What she claimed was that they want a policy based on the facts on the ground, not on a campaign promise.

The polling data do not unambiguously support the notion that the American people want the troops withdrawn within 16 months regardless of any facts on the ground. The available data contain at least ambiguities if not outright contradictions that leave open the reading that the American people want BOTH for the troops to be withdrawn within 16 months AND for that policy to be based on the facts on the ground (which they presently assess to be in favor of withdrawal within 16 months.)

How the American people will react if the Obama administration releases a new assessment early next year of the facts on the ground in Iraq that indicates clear disadvantages to strictly adhering to the 16 month campaign promise and/or clear advantages to deviating from that promise is not clear from current polling data. Liasson's assertion that they will prefer policy based on the new assessment of the facts is not unreasonable, even though that assertion is not directly supported by the current polling data. She could have been more clear in stating that her assertion was her own opinion, not established fact or well-supported with data, but that seems a fairly minor quibble when she did not claim that there definitely were such factual supports and when she was speaking in the context of a political opinion/punditry show, not a news report.

The difference is Glenn offers facts. Something which you seem to avoid/ignore.

Look folks, if you're going to insist on withdrawal from Iraq, why not withdrawal from ALL the overseas engagements, and the 700-odd bases we have. No more casualties, pay off all our debts, the world will love us, and the price of crude would drop. What's not to like?