Today in Iraq, er, Iran

As a neocon, I support withdrawal from Iraq to destabilize the region.

Joe- here's McCain on Sadr and the ceasefire:

Asked if the Basra campaign had backfired, he said: “Apparently it was Sadr who asked for the ceasefire, declared a ceasefire. It wasn’t Maliki. Very rarely do I see the winning side declare a ceasefire. So we’ll see.’’

I believe you referred to McCain's ignorant statements on Iraq as "pandering" a couple of weeks ago? He's not pandering. He doesn't have a clue what's going on. He thinks Iraq is Vichy France and we just have to drive out the bad guys and declare victory. He is genuinely ignorant, and genuinely dangerous.

Can we start saying this out loud? I know it makes Tweety and Russert cry, but it's kind of important.

For a leader routinely described by U.S. intelligence sources as a video game-playing goofball

In fairness, that's how their intelligence sources describe our president, too.

the President's dopey statements

How brave Chutzpah Joe has grown as Bush does his lame duck waddle. Would he speak so harshly of John McCain for confusing Al Qaeda with Shia militia. Not so much. Of course, Chutzpah Joe never knew that Bush Jr. was a stupid thug until this week. Maybe he will eventually find out something similar about McCain (NEVER SURRENDER!)

So Maliki pulls a political stunt with the military to try and build his resume ahead of national elections, only to have it blow up in his face in the end? No wonder he's W's guy in Iraq. They're two peas in a pod.

First off, thanks for this well-informed post. You've been the one of the MSM's best analysts of what's going on in Iraq, and it's much appreciated.

Also, Jim, Foolish Literalist, has an important point.

John McCain is incapable of saying anything but nonsense about Iraq.

Whether it's a conscious strategy of deliberately misleading us, or he genuinely has no idea what's going on, it is dangerous as all hell. Please mention it in public.

Joe, I think if you're going to refer to the quietist school in Iran, you should also note that al Sistani is a member of that school, and the Maliki's faction is a member of the revolutionary school, as the Iranian government is.

this U.S. government has been singularly unreceptive to good ideas

Thanks Joe, I needed that...

Michael Scherer opened the floor for questions to ask McCain and many of the important ones (to me anyway) center on the situation on the ground in Iraq. The dialogue with Michael has revealed that the biggest problem hasn't been asking mcCain the hard questions. The big problem has been fact-checking his answers.

Please mention it in public.

Ha, ha, ha! Earth to Elvis, McCain is the favored plutocrat tool. Clinton and Obama are the backups. You will see Chutzpah Joe denounce McCain as an incompetent bozo when the fish are in the trees. Joe Klein occupies his current position because he is an assiduous liar in the pay of the permanent government of the United States: the rich. McCain will be very solicitous of the rich and powerful, therefore his candicacy will be favored by rented "opinion makers" like Chutzpah Joe Klein. Watch, as week by week, Chutzpah Joe is constantly "pleasantly surprised" to "discover" appealing new characteristics that make McCain a great choice for America.

Klein & McCain: trusted tools of those who rule.

"Wrongest"? Perhaps we should invest in a copy editor.

Tom T: great comment.

It pains me when it's clear I know more than Bush sounds like he knows, and McCain has seemed nearly as clueless. What a very sorry state we're in.

Presidential nuts have been extracted from the alleged fire by the use of those long, looooong, looooooooong silver presidential tongs!

Me, I'm gonna go worship Operah's silver Tiffany bubble blower...

What day is this, anyway? I for one favor choosing whichever faction is against Iran, which ever faction that is, at least THIS week...

What the heck, who cares, let's play both ends against the middle, then we'll play that agains the left while the right isn't paying attention to what the religous zealots like Sistani are doing. Or is Sistani more middle of the road, now.

Hells bells! Is THIS fun! Since if the violence goes down and we're succeeding so we should stay and if the violence goes up it's all the more reason why we should stay anyway, what matter is it that a few months ago, we were hugging the Sunnis who have this insurgency thing going, because they don't like Al-Queda, now that THEY went and picked sides.

Curious.

That's what I think(?!), anyway, if that was indeed who they were killing THAT week, but me, I would plunk MY money down on the Kurds. Never mind the fact that they hosted the Al-Queda base that Powell made so famous! This week they don't like Iran either. Or was that LAST week?

But, of COURSE, what was I thinking? We have the surge now and THAT was SOO last year. Mebbe we should change our stragedy, er, strategy, er, um, what ever it is who we was planning to hug this week...

"For a leader routinely described by U.S. intelligence sources as a video game-playing goofball

In fairness, that's how their intelligence sources describe our president, too."

Tom, you owe me a new keyboard.

And what about McCain's spin on the situation? Either is completely, willfully ignorant about what's going on or he's lying and will continue lying because he has so much personally at stake in keeping up the pretense that the surge is working.

Joe, thanks again for being one of the few MSM who is informing the public about the complexities of the Middle East.

Thanks for keeping us informed about what's really happening on the ground in Iraq, Joe.

On a side note, last night I was wandering by C-Span and saw Karl Rove giving a speech. I lingered for a minute or two -- it seems it was an address he gave on Friday to Young Americans for Freedom.(?) Of course he spoke about how evil Hillary and Obama were and how maverick and true McCain is, but I was struck by the fact that he mentioned Joe Klein by name. Using your article on Gore as a testament to how really messed up the Democrats were if Al Gore could be a good answer to any question. Just thought you'd like to know your fans are legion.

Joe,

The whole thing in Basra demonstrated the charade of the bush’s administration. The surge is working as long as the insurgents collaborate with the U.S. If they decide to create havoc at any giving moment, they will create it. If the surge is working and the Iraqi government is stronger, why there is not any governmental office outside the Green Zone? I don’t see any American diplomat walking Baghdad’s streets. Now it is a good time for McCain to walk those streets as he shamefully did it two weeks ago. How can he did not go there during the past week to broker a peace between our so called friend?

I read on the Boston Globe that the post-surge troop level is now estimated at 140,000 troops:

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2008/02/26/pentagon_expects_post_surge_troop_level_at_140000/

Is anyone else noticing that the Surge seems to be ever so slowly going from a "surge" to a "permanent ramp-up of American forces"?

The whole thing in Basra demonstrated the charade of the bush’s administration.

You think it makes the least difference to the public and the paid pundits that mortar rounds and rockets are landing near the US Embassy in Baghdad five years after we invaded the country? Propaganda rules, and Time-Warner-Moloch supplies the tools.

Things are improving in Iraq. Haven't you heard? It's all over TV and in the news magazines and papers. Victory is near.

Joe,

You don’t have to invest on an editor as suggested by a commentator in your blog.
People need to invest on a reality check book to find the following facts:
• Any war won 5 or 8 years later is not a victory.
• Factions in Iraq will not reconcile
• The Iraqi government did not, does not, and it will never work
• Democracy is America is a mockery as long as we have the electorate collage and justices decide against the will of the people. If this is the case, why do we want to install this non-working system in another county?
• The Iraqi war and invasion should have been done back then in 1992 when America and the rest of the world had a legitimate reason to pull then back from Kuwait.
• America learned a hard lesson, we can’t do it alone.
• The Bush administration is responsible for the death of all those troops since they were not prepared. They themselves are admitting that the surge is working; therefore, whatever went wrong before the surge, they are responsible for it for lack pf preparation.

Back in December of 2006 someone had one of his expert ideas.

****************
The situation is very, very serious. It requires injection of additional troops to control the situation and allow the political process to proceed...

We should have arrested Sadr three years ago. He continues to be a major obstacle to peace, his influence in domestic politics needs to be eliminated dramatically.
*****************

I'm not sure the speaker understood the circumstances involved in that failure to arrest. In early April of 2004 tough talking Paul Bremer and Dan Senor announced an arrest warrant had been issued for Muqtada al-Sadr. In late June, both Bremer and Senor were high-tailing it out of town.

Fast forward to December 2006. Sen. John McCain calls for more troops in Iraq while on a trip there and he calls for the dramatic elimination of al-Sadr's influence. Do you think McCain has a clue now, or had a clue then, as to the potential consequences of dramatically eliminating al-Sadr's influence?

The thing McCain telegraphs very effectively to his low-information fans is the hair-trigger willingness to use murderous force. Now that the American propaganda machine has reduced Iraq to a good/evil comic book, it is easy to sell a "real hero" who will not hesitate to rain death on the EVIL ONES.

This adulation of McCain as a death-bringer literally makes me sick. The numb and jocular attitude of the Swamplanders toward the McCain candidacy represents the nadir of the American press at a time when it is desperately needed to protect our society from a bellicose militarist.

I fear for our country.

How Franklin Roosevelt Lied America Into War

by William Henry Chamberlin

"According to his own official statements, repeated on many occasions, and with special emphasis when the presidential election of 1940 was at stake, Franklin D. Roosevelt's policy after the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1939 was dominated by one overriding thought: how to keep the United States at peace. One of the President's first actions after the beginning of hostilities was to call Congress into special session and ask for the repeal of the embargo on the sales of arms to belligerent powers, which was part of the existing neutrality legislation. He based his appeal on the argument that this move would help to keep the United States at peace. His words on the subject were:

Let no group assume the exclusive label of the "peace bloc." We all belong to it ... I give you my deep and unalterable conviction, based on years of experience as a worker in the field of international peace, that by the repeal of the embargo the United States will more probably remain at peace than if the law remains as it stands today ... Our acts must be guided by one single, hardheaded thought -- keeping America out of the war.

This statement was made after the President had opened up a secret correspondence with Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty and later Prime Minister in the British government. What has been revealed of this correspondence, even in Churchill's own memoirs, inspires considerable doubt as to whether its main purpose was keeping America out of the war.
Roosevelt kept up his pose as the devoted champion of peace even after the fall of France, when Great Britain was committed to a war which, given the balance of power in manpower and industrial resources, it could not hope to win without the involvement of other great powers, such as the United States and the Soviet Union. The President's pledges of pursuing a policy designed to keep the United States at peace reached a shrill crescendo during the last days of the 1940 campaign.
Mr. Roosevelt said at Boston on October 30: "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."
The same thought was expressed in a speech at Brooklyn on November 1: "I am fighting to keep our people out of foreign wars. And I will keep on fighting."
The President told his audience at Rochester, New York, on November 2: "Your national government ... is equally a government of peace -- a government that intends to retain peace for the American people."
On the same day the voters of Buffalo were assured: "Your President says this country is not going to war."
And he declared at Cleveland on November 3: "The first purpose of our foreign policy is to keep our country out of war."
So much for presidential words. What about presidential actions? American involvement in war with Germany was preceded by a long series of steps, not one of which could reasonably be represented as conducive to the achievement of the President's professed ideal of keeping the United States out of foreign wars.

Hmmmm and George W Bush and John McCain are such evil people, imagine that!!

Hmmmm and George W Bush and John McCain are such evil people, imagine that!!

If you live near a city, you are at risk of being killed by a Chinese or Russian missile attack. Such an attack is a remote possibility today, but it is a real future risk. What kind of man would set up a nuclear standoff and push it to the brink? Somebody like John McCain, who has run risks and lived on the edge for much of his life. McCain believes in using America's military to aggressively advance America's interests.

People who survive multiple wartime brushes with death, like John McCain sometimes develop a self-concept of messianic invincibility and destiny. (Hitler survived a suicide mission in which he won the Iron Cross, and a subsequent gas attack. He ran as a war hero and waved the bloody shirt of German sacrifice in WWI.)

America will likely be forced into gasoline rationing within the next decade, possibly withing the term of a McCain administration. If war mongers scream for conquest of the oil rich countries of the Mideast to preserve America's "energy security," the Russians, Europeans, and Chinese may balk. These are all nuclear-armed powers, and more Islamic states may be nuclear armed by then.

Would President McCain risk a nuclear standoff to preserve unhindered access to dwindling global oil supplies? If you vote for McCain, you will literally be betting your life on that question. The people who voted Bush into office did not know that they would be voting for torture and wars of aggression, but that is what we got.

What does John McCain have in store for America? Peace and prosperity? I don't think so.

How Franklin Roosevelt Lied America Into War

Great post, although it's a little unclear whether the original writer assigns blame for WWII to Roosevelt, Churchill, or maybe even Stalin. Really, though, wasn't it the fault of the Poles, who had the temerity to fight back against shock-and-awe 1930's style? Well, the great thing about the last 7 years has been that if the facts were inconvenient, it has been perfectly allowable to just make up new ones and substitute freely.

Hopefully, McCain will at least have the decency to hire people who are able to distinguish fact from political position papers. But, if he starts talking about the time North Vietnam invaded Japan, I guess we'll have gotten our answer....

Hopefully, McCain will at least have the decency to hire people who are able to distinguish fact from political position papers.

McCain's advisers include the same PNAC idiots that cooked up the Iraq war. This crew would be looking for a fight from the first day they take office. Have we learned NOTHING?

Source: http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/special3/articles/0811mccain-advisers-ON.html

• Henry Kissinger - Former U.S. secretary of State.
• William Kristol - Editor of the Weekly Standard, a Washington-based political magazine.
• Robert Kagan - A senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a columnist on world affairs.
• Randy Scheunemann - Consultant who was defense and foreign-policy coordinator to McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. Like Kagan and Kristol, he also is listed as a director of the Project for the New American Century, a non-profit conservative organization whose self-stated goal is to promote American global leadership.
• Gary Schmitt - Senior fellow at the conservative Project for the New American Century. He is an author and served under President Reagan as executive director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
• Stephen Biegun - Ford Motor Co. vice president and former national security adviser to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. He also served as executive secretary of the National Security Council at the White House from 2001 to 2003.
• Brent Scowcroft - National security advisor under President George H.W. Bush and fellow board member with McCain on the International Republican Institute, a democracy building organization that McCain chairs.
• Colin Powell - Former secretary of State and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• Niall Ferguson - A professor of history at Harvard and prolific author.
• Barry McCaffrey - Retired Army general and former White House drug czar under President Bill Clinton.
• Robert Zoellick - Former Deputy Secretary of State and former U.S. trade representative.
• Richard Armitage - Former deputy secretary of State.
• Eliot Cohen - Conservative professor of military affairs at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
• Robert Kimmitt - Deputy secretary of the Department of the Treasury; former ambassador to Germany.
• Andrew Krepinevich - Retired Army officer who is now executive director at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments that focuses on defense spending and planning.
• Ralph Peters - Retired Army office and author.
• Charles Larson - A retired Navy admiral, who twice served as superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. He ran unsuccessfully as a Democratic candidate for lieutenant government of Maryland in 2002 and now serves on the board of directors of the Northrop Grumman Corp., a defense company.
• Bernard Aronson - Former assistant secretary of State for inter-American affairs.
• Lorne Craner - President of the International Republican Institute. He served as assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor under Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Rusty the Wonder Pooch:

Havn't you forgotten something?

Maybe a little matter of Dec 7, 1941?

You know. Pearl Harbor.

Oh! EXCUSE me! I forgot. You're one of these new Republicans. They certainly can't do history...

My point is, you're going to find people who believe in UFO's, channeling some 11,000 year old spirit, or some other off-the-wall opinion, but I honestly don't think that such an opinion is really going to make Bush & Darth any less evil.

Or, stoopid.

Rustydog writes:

***************
What about presidential actions? American involvement in war with Germany was preceded by a long series of steps, not one of which could reasonably be represented as conducive to the achievement of the President's professed ideal of keeping the United States out of foreign wars.
****************

53_2 makes a good point about Pearl Harbor don't you think Rustydog?

And just to review the chronology at the end of 1941:

********************
December 7 - Japan launches surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and declares war on the United States

December 8 - United States and Britain declare war on Japan

December 11 - Germany honors its alliance with Japan and declares war on United States

Thereafter on December 11, the President declares the United States at war with Germany
*********************

As I have said before, take your rose colored glasses off HH, 53_2 and the likes. You missed the whole point of this post of a great article written by William Henry Chamberlain in 1941. Politician's through out history have made promises, in this case a Democrat seeking re-election; Franklin D. Roosevelt

The President's pledges of pursuing a policy designed to keep the United States at peace reached a shrill crescendo during the last days of the 1940 campaign.

Mr. Roosevelt said at Boston on October 30: "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."
The same thought was expressed in a speech at Brooklyn on November 1: "I am fighting to keep our people out of foreign wars. And I will keep on fighting."

CMike: 53_2 makes a good point about Pearl Harbor don't you think Rustydog?

Yes he does CMike, proving my point exactly that the attack on 9/11 provided the impetus for war, we were for the 2nd time in history, attacked on our own soil. Provoked into a "War on Terror".

But, again I shall repeat for history sake, this war was not started by a Republican, no, it was a democratic President at this time in history. But, did the people of the United States totally reject Roosevelt? No, they rallied to fight an enemy intent on destroying our way of life in this great country. This is what the brave Men and Women of our Armed forces saw then, and today.

HH and 53_2 have convinced themselves, as well as thousands of others that the entire purpose of this “War on Terror” is all about the impending oil shortage, and our gluttony to continue using oil. I strongly believe it is not, the Islamic extremists are after one thing and one thing only to destroy America and its way of life. Their goal is to impose that extreme way of life on all people in all countries under the name of Mohammed.

Under Osama bin Laden or Ahmadinejad, you will not have a forum to write your discourse of their government. You will not have the opportunity to voice your concerns about how much money they spend to continue their crusade. You will only have the ability to grumble in a dark corner how your FREEDOM has been taken away.

All of Obama’s supposed oratory skills will not change their minds, not one hour, one minute or one second. He has already demonstrated how he will throw his own Grandmother under the “bus”, rather than getting in the driver’s seat and drive the bus. His agenda is “Hope”. His hope was found about 7 years ago when he was told to change his way of “reaching out to the people”. Give them something they can grasp onto, even if you cannot deliver what you say.

So it all comes down to isolationism or continue to defeat this radicalism. 53_2 and HH choose isolationism, as does Obama. Obama has said, “I’ll bring our troops home and secure the borders”. I say, Go back to Illinois!!

Hey Rustydog,

Just a reminder, since you have obviously forgotten:

The attack of 9/11 had NOTHING to do with Iraq.

Nothing.

At.

All.

We've spent unfathomable amounts of money fighting a war in Iraq WHILE THE PERSON BEHIND 9/11 STILL GOES FREE.

And there's a BIG difference between Hitler and Osama Bin Laden. Hitler was in charge of the most powerful country in Europe, while Osama has a ragtag following of social misfits.

Another truth, one of the oldest ones in the book of war: Know Thy Enemy. Terrorists thrive on exactly the situation we have created in Iraq. Just look at the West Bank/Gaza. The worse you make things, the more people you arrest and kill, the more terrorists you create. I'm not going to pretend I know the right answer, but I know the wrong one when I see it.

American conservatism always fails America at watershed moments because American conservatism denies that the present is unique. Instead our conservatives believe the present is essentially but a repeat of one or another well understood moment from history which requires a tried and true course of action. (We'll not dwell here on the fact that conservatives have fantastic, romanticized notions of the past.)

9/11 is like Pearl Harbor; Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush is like Commander-in-Chief Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Bin Laden, Ahmadinejad, and - each in their turn - Saddam Hussein/al-Zarqawi/al-Sadr are like Tojo, Hitler, and Mussolini. You'll notice that Kim Jong-il had to be cut out of the narrative because the story only has three front-and-center bad guys at one time.

Rustydog proves the rule yet again that conservatives are worshipers of dead liberals. But not to worry, no dissonance here - they have it in their minds that our Founding Fathers were conservatives; conservative revolutionaries that is.

American conservatives, what a bunch of kooks.

C'mon Rustydog, reread (or read) CMike's chronology. Hitler declared war on the United States first, not the other way around, four days after Pearl Harbor. The declaration was followed by extensive submarine attacks (Operation Drumbeat) on US shipping along the east coast and the Gulf of Mexico. These are historical facts.

Roosevelt/WWII is not Bush/Iraq Invasion. You believe that the American people should be united behind their government? I do too. Let the government make an honest and clear case for its actions.

Compare the honesty and clarity of the Day of Infamy speech to the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.

I see that McCain is slamming Obama for not having experience re Iraq; well, Juan Cole slams McCain for either lying or knowing diddly this morning.

I hope the MSM really holds McCain's feet to the fire for his "surprised" remarks re Sadr.

It is my opinion the Bushies will do anything, anything to help McCain win this election.

the Islamic extremists are after one thing and one thing only to destroy America and its way of life. Their goal is to impose that extreme way of life on all people in all countries under the name of Mohammed.

This is paranoid insanity. A few hundred jihadis hiding in caves have zero potential of conquering the United States. Bin Laden has never been after world conquest. Bin Laden does not have 700 military bases all over the world. Bin Laden is a ruthless terrorist with goals focussed on driving Westerners out of the Islamic world.

Rusty ignores the extraordinary convenience of the Sooper Dooper Islamofascist threat arising (Hey, presto!) exactly at the time of the collapse of the Communist "threat." What extraordinarily good timing for the Military-Industrial Complex.

To sustain a colossal war machine, there has to be a bogeyman. Thanks to the power of modern propaganda, a tiny terrorist group that managed to stage one freakishly destructive attack on New York is now the justification for the US spending more on "defense" than the rest of the world combined.

If, by some magic, Bin Laden surrendered and the Islamic insurgents all laid down their weapons, the American War Machine would instantly turn up the propaganda music on the Chinese "threat," or the Venezuelan "threat," or the Mexican "threat." Under Reagan there was a "threat" from Nicaragua, for God's sake. As long as credulous fools like Rusty make up half of the US population, we will always be at war.

Rusty will never be persuaded that this is folly because he is crazed by fear. This militaristic madness will end only when America is financially exhausted and/or struck by nuclear weapons. Until then, the militarists are in the driver's seat because TV propaganda rules America, and they control the propaganda machinery.

I hope the MSM really holds McCain's feet to the fire for his "surprised" remarks re Sadr.

And I hope for a magic pony to come and fly me to the moon......

I hope the MSM really holds McCain's feet to the fire for his "surprised" remarks re Sadr.

And I hope for a magic pony to come and fly me to the moon......

We know the script. McCain will "misspeak" whenever caught in a howling error, just like Ronzo Reagan. If senior moments become frequent, they will wall him off from the press and throw the bozos off the Bus.

McCain is the primo candidate of the American War Machine, and billions of dollars of contracts are riding on his candidacy. Every available lever of propaganda will be pulled to put him in office. Watch for Joe Klein to "discover" many attractive qualities in McCain as the election approaches.

Time Magazine will package McCain as a "safe bet" for protecting America. The merchandising of a hot-tempered, semi-senile militarist as a safe choice for leadership will be another masterpiece of MSM propaganda.

Joe Klein - Thanks for this post. Anytime you indicate that you are reading Juan Cole is a good enough time for me to thank you. One thing though:

I could plead with you to include this level of detail in your print columns but I will refrain - you probably have tried and could provide links! Instead I want you to think about the best way to convey this information to the public. The sad fact is that you are being pitted against conservative publications that appear to have a vested interest in simplifying the alliances in order to suit their narrow ideological goals.

Try a flow chart! How about a map with arrows? Anything that might communicate to the people around me that there is a difference between Sadr and Maliki - a difference between a Persian and an Arab.

Do you think if I hold my breath and stamp my feet the MSM will deliver a pony to my house....

Joe Klein - Thanks

Yes, thanks Chutzpah Joe. Thanks a million!

Thanks for publicly lying about "Primary Colors" and ferociously attacking those who questioned your honesty.

Thanks for telling us what a swell guy George Bush Jr. is.

Thanks for telling us invading Iraq was a good idea.

Thanks for telling us that Scooter Libby should not be jailed.

Thanks for telling us that General Petraeus is a great hero.

Thanks for giving us the "good news" about the Anbar awakening and our improving situation in Iraq.

Thanks for pimping for Hoekstra and supporting illegal wiretaps of Americans.

Thanks for failing to apologize when caught in egregious errors.

Thanks for admitting to stupidity several times each month and proving that stupidity is compatible with journalistic prominence.

Thanks for pretending to be a "liberal" while enabling the worst presidential administration in modern American history.

Thanks for not coming to appropriate conclusions about the incompetence of clueless John McCain.

But, above all, thanks for being the poster boy for professional dishonesty in America.

So Rustydog complains about HH and 53_2 being isolationist, but then complains about FDR getting us into WWII?

Or is he trying to indicate FDR lied before the war in order to get reelected, and although that is a bad thing somehow that makes it OK for Bush and McCain to lie?

Or does it all boil down to claiming that Democrats are always anti-war and then showing us to be hypocrites because of FDR's warmongering ways?

I'm not seeing a consistent argument here.

Anyone opposed to war crimes is obviously isolationist. Anyone opposed to pirate capitalism is obviously socialist. Anyone opposed to theocracy is obviously atheist.

Epithets now substitute for thought for much of the population. Labels have replaced ideas, and anger has replaced reason. Above all else, dishonesty is respected, and the mark of a person's power is how cunningly that person can hide the truth.

Joe Klein is America, and you can too!