Off-Topic, but you've been rather silent on Bremer's displeasure with the post-war planning in Iraq...

Ha! Sorry, I didn't get to that responsibility on my "what you need to blog about" checklist, (sent to me every morning by the National Blogging Standards Board of Professional Standards and Requisite Topic Assignment).

Short take - Bremer expressed what most people, even at least half of the VRWC now acknowledges - Rumsfeld's master plan for a 21st Century light, mobile, lethal military was fantastic for winning battles, but very poorly designed for winning a peace and stabilizing a country.

What else to say?

Kerry ain't going to pour MORE troops into Iraq, and the reserves are already thin. We make due. Rumsfeld's out next term anyway (if there's a next term).

Let's see, what else ... oh yeah, I think paul Bremer is a great man, and I trust his assessment.

Wow, so an anonymous republican can claim to be a democrat. Or a republican can lie about a message he supposedly recieved from an anonymous democrat. What fantastic reporting!

I LOVE the smell of desperation in the morning. It smells like victory!

Thats why I love your site. Every moment I come here, I know that you know you are losing.

Tommy -

I just thought that it was funny, and the point was to play a joke on the Dems that are trying to spin the ridiculous online polls after the debates. It's silly.

I can't stand people that have minds infected with the partisan vitriol that you just vomited out in that comment. Your demeanor would be funny if it weren't so sad and angry.

Lighten up.

Plus the refusal of Turkey to allow the 4th ID to enter. That bolluxed things up for months right there.

Bremer didn't say "We need a massive increase of troops _now_", but "We could have used more troops right at the start."

Dissing Turkey officially wouldn't be prudent either.

It would be interesting to see the numbers out of some newspaper's letter-to-the-editor pages though. '15% insane-pro, 20% pro, 20% against, 20% insane against, 25% off-topic'

Bill,

Just doing a litmus test. Answer: While it's clear this isn't a "fair and balanced" forum, you're also clearly more rational then most of the perople who comment. And that, in our age of safely anonymous vitorol, is a minor wonder.

If Bremer decides to get all defensive on this and push his line that "the military dropped the ball, which is why Iraq sucks so bad right nowm," I wonder how fast the "Bremer has no integrity" attacks would start?

I honestly don't think that they would, or at least not on the scale that you are thinking of. There was a reason that Richard Clarke was eviscerated - he was a bitter, conniving screwball. he was wrong about National Security for a decade, and his characterizations of post 9-11 conversations about Iraq were warped.

If Paul Bremer speaks, I will listen, and so will a lot of other people.

To be fair, the plan called for the 4th Infantry to invade through Turkey but the Turkish Parliament nixed that at the last minute. Instead they got to take a leisurely cruise on the Mediterranean while the other half of the pincer closed from the South.

Had the 4th been in place they would have caught the Iraqi forces fleeing north; the Feydayen, terrorists, and disgruntled Ba'athists would have been crushed between the hammer from the South and the anvil in the North. There would have been no Sunni Triangle uprising because everyone responsible for it would have been dead or in prison.

Back to the topic allegedly at hand, I thought that editor's response was friggin hilarious.

You guys are less street smart than those guys named Scooter who work for Bush. No wonder we keep getting our ***** kicked."

That last line left me laughing so hard the dogs were worried and the cats cleared out of the office.

"We."
From a newspaper editor, yet.

Just typing it started me going again!

as one of the perople commenting here, I wonder if Tommy is laughing now, while Cheney is delivering the spanking of the century to Edwards.

and the thought of the polling hijinks that are about to unfold just makes it sweeter.

Cheney to Edwards: as the president of the Senate, for the last four years, I've been in the Senate every Tuesday. Today is the first day I've every met you.

"I can't stand people that have minds infected with the partisan vitriol that you just vomited out in that comment. Your demeanor would be funny if it weren't so sad and angry"

Sad and angry? Man, I'm loving it here! I find that people who like to use the "vomitting vitriol" meme are usually the angry ones who sadly can't say much.

Seriously, go write some more stuff. I love the attempts to spin the debates into some sort of Cheney victory. Your man lied an awful lot, and supplied a lot of advertisement fodder. You guys wore out his themes months ago, the "the world is out to kill you, America, and only we can save you" approach is failing.

Kerry is winning, truth is winning, and democracy is winning. And everything you write here convinces me that you know it, too, and are desperately trying to get the rest of the tribe to cling to the fantasy you've lived in for the past 3 years.

(EDITOR - What does it say about Tommy Pain's comment that he read me so wrong? My commentary is most assuredly an attempt to be honest, but he accuses me of cynical spin. And if in reality, he can't even spot me for the deluded, foolish believer that I am, what makes his assessment of the Kerry campaign's progress any better? Something to ponder.)

uh, Bill... wtf?