“¹TNR liberal-enabled neoconservative estimate”

Neo-Con casualty estimates: Three skinned knees, twelve booboos on elbows, the frisbee, and one poor son of a bitch spilled his Tab all over the Humvee.

He he … next it’s on to Iran, where after a few wet willies, we’ll be greeted as liberators. We can confront the formidable finger traps that await us in China once we’ve sorted out the Middle East.

I just wish one could comment to their faces on TNR’s various inanities, but not only does one have to “subscribe” (to the actual magazine, resulting in the corpse of a tree being stuffed into one’s mailbox) to read half of the stories they put on-line, one must subscribe to post a comment.
And since the whole GDF thing is a vanity project anyway, why are they such money-grubbers?

A gallon of balls from Marty Peretz’ sweat?

I can see how that might be difficult.

Beinart was most annoying because he was a cheap fantasist and yet he considered himself morally superior to those unwilling to engage in fantasy-based foreign policy. (He shares this with Hitchens, they both play the same game.)

You see, he *fantasized* that life would get much better for Iraqis (and the Middle East) as a result of a US invasion.

On the ‘other’ side of his moral spectrum were liberals and leftists who refused to fantasize that life would get a lot better for Iraqis and others as a result of a US invasion.

Now, you & I might think that you should judge the morality of one’s program based on what *actually* happens.

And here you are wrong, according to Beinart & crew, especially a few years ago: they are only to be held responsible for what they *wished* to happen in Iraq, not for what *actually* happened as a result of the actions for which they led the cheering.

Beinart, Hitchens: Morally superior because they *fantasized* that their policies would bring justice and a better life to Iraqis. They are in no way morally responsible if reality turned out differently.

Real liberals and leftists: Morally inferior because we refused to engage in fantasy as a serious level of foreign policy analysis.

3rd most stupid Rhodes Scholar? You mean he is ahead of Jessie Malkin?

Well done. Notice how he never actually answered Moyers’ question? Sputtering like a fool about how print is superior to television…or something.

So those of us who were against the war from the first were, “intellectually incoherent” while Kool-Aid drinkers like himself were “on the side of the angels” Angels of DEATH maybe! Charlie’s angels?

Marty Peretz sure can pick em, eh? Beinart and Sullivan both are callow, coddled little wonks with no idea how the real world works. Teacher’s pets vacuumed from academia to the Beltway, hermetically sealed from the dangerous, bloody and soul-destroying
exercise of war. And so damned arrogant about it.

Jesse Malkin is a Rhodes scholar? No! Anyway, I guess Jesse’s too insignificant to have made wikipedia’s list of significant Rhodes scholars.

But let’s put Beinart at fourth most-stupid if Jesse really is one.

Dick, Dicker and Peter would be a great name for a folk music group.

Marty Peretz sure can pick em, eh? Beinart and Sullivan both are callow, coddled little wonks with no idea how the real world works. Teacher’s pets vacuumed from academia to the Beltway, hermetically sealed from the dangerous, bloody and soul-destroying exercise of war.

Yeah. Although, every once in a while, Sullivan seems to be catching on to what a fool he was to promote Bush’s “short, victorious war.”

Sullivan, inexcusably, could not pick up on the language and rhetoric of shameless imperial ambition coming out of Washington. As a sentimental Tory in his formative years he had little understanding of the flip side of empire. He still does not grok it.

So those of us who were against the war from the first were, “intellectually incoherent� while Kool-Aid drinkers like himself were “on the side of the angels� Angels of DEATH maybe! Charlie’s angels?

Hell’s Angels – Washington D.C. Chapter

Now I happen to like Beinart, in a bacon and Play-Doh kind of way …

Leggo my Beinart! Me & Pammy got dibs on his bacon, & we’re planning on using his Play Doh to erect a monument to his stupidity!

peter beinart got what he wanted–a sinecure at a major magazine, most likely a brookings appointment on the way, and i’m sure solid 6 figure salary. who cares about anything else? he just did it for the money, the money, the money…

also, i’m sick of the crap that ann althouse’s right breast spews. you call that mother’s milk? what about her left breast, eh?

I’m pretty amazed at the intro to the piece:

Four years ago this spring, the Bush administration took leave of reality and plunged our country into a war so poorly planned it turned into a disaster. The story of how high officials misled the country has been told, but they couldn’t have done it on their own. They needed a compliant press to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on.

Wow. Not news to anyone who’s been paying attention, but to say that on TV?

and d.

if that’s beinart mea culpa nut graf, what is george tenet’s?

i’m a total tool. a loser. a douchebag. i enabled a fuckwad to destroy everything good about america, taking my lifetime of service to this country and dumping it in a diarrhea laden toilet where i let it fester before i flushed it into the raw sewage. i have no balls, no courage, no heart, and no conscience. i accepted a medal of freedom from a total asshat and am now getting a high six-figure advance to tell you that BEFORE i accepted that medal i knew that the person giving it to me was a pathetic wastrel. i have to now acknowledge that in doing so i became quite possibly the worst person in history. i deserve to be punished–and i have become a flagellant–but that is not enough. if in one thousand years my eyes have constantly been pecked at by crows i still will not have come close to showing enough contrition for what i have done.

only harsher.

robert green: that was worthy of The Rude Pundit.

BORING

You are giving this Beinhart guy way too much serious analysis. Can’t we just put his picture up and say whether we would do him or not? I think he’s kind of cute.

Can’t we just put his picture up and say whether we would do him or not? I think he’s kind of cute.

I think some impartial arbiter should be called in.

Speaking of impartial arbiters, isn’t it time to update Ace’s totally awesome logo (that would be the one Sadly, No! made for him)?

I’m thinking of something along the lines of

Ace of Spades HQ: Now 50% Less Ghey!1one!!

I like your suggestion ITTDGY. I was thinking one of Ace’s crossed swords should be a strip of bacon.

One comment, there should be a (sound of Beinhart being kicked repeatedly in the balls) after ‘The End’.

…that or the sound of him swinging at the end of his suicide noose.

hmmm. at the risk of being a “funny arbiter”: kicked in the balls – funny; suicide – not funny.

Dear robert green,

My Left Breast is for loading & unloading only!

Sincerely,

AA’sRB

Kathleen said,
April 27, 2007 at 19:50

Oh don’t worry, that’s just Mr Hyde peeking out from behind the freezer.

Charlie’s angels?

Now that you mention it, he does bear a striking (dare I say, eerie?) resemblance to Bri, the smart one!

You are giving this Beinhart guy way too much serious analysis. Can’t we just put his picture up and say whether we would do him or not? I think he’s kind of cute.

He’s not bad looking if he keeps his mouth shut, otherwise it’s The Big Book of British Smiles, “Mind the Gap” chapter.

oh nurtz

One question: Does he get to use a bucket for the ball-sweat collection, or does he have to use his mouth?

One question: Does he get to use a bucket for the ball-sweat collection, or does he have to use his mouth?

A swab and a bucket. Part of the penance is that Beinhart will never, never, ever be permitted to open his mouth again. I’d suggest he cut off his typing fingers as well, but future generations would be negatively impacted if B. were to need an alternative to playing with himself.

Here’s a novel idea:

JOHN WALCOTT [Knight Ridder DC bureau chief]: Our readers aren’t here in Washington. They aren’t up in New York. They aren’t the people who send other people’s kids to war. They’re the people who get sent to war.

And we felt an obligation to them, to explain why that might happen. We were determined to scrutinize the administration’s case for war as closely as we possibly could. And that’s what we set out to do.

One might call this supporting the troops.

Here’s an odd one:

WARREN STROBEL [Knight Ridder DC reporter]: The first rule of being an intelligence agent, or a journalist, and they’re really not that different, is you’re skeptical of defectors, because they have a reason to exaggerate. They want to increase their value to you. They probably want something from you. Doesn’t mean they’re lying, but you should be — journalists are supposed to be skeptical, right? And I’m-afraid the NEW YORK TIMES reporter in that case and a lot of other reporters were just not skeptical of what these defectors were saying. Nor was the administration.

Journalistic skepticism? That’s so old school!

The Crooks & Liars video shows the first exchange between Moyers and Beinart. There’s a second near the end of the program:

PETER BEINART: Where I think I was tragically wrong was not to see in February, March 2003 after we got the inspectors back in on the ground and we began to learn much more about what had been going on in Iraq than we had known in 2002 when we had no one on the ground that that assumption was being proven wrong.

BILL MOYERS: You say tragically wrong.

PETER BEINART: Because I think the war has been a tragic disaster. I mean– the Americans killed, the Iraqis killed. It’s true, life under Saddam was hell. But can one really say that life for Iraqis is better today?

All three quotes from the PBS transcript of “Buying the War.”

Neo-Con casualty estimates: Three skinned knees, twelve booboos on elbows,
There are bonobos in Iraq?!
— Feck, I need new glasses.

DA, thank you ever so much for the links. The Moyers program is the first time I’ve watched a solid hour of TV in more than 15 years. It was well worth it. The man is a national treasure — if only I had any reason to believe that his work would be seen by anywhere near enough people to have a real effect . . .

Personally I’d like to see Beinart come back from patrol in Fallujah only to get fragged by the other guys in his platoon. Then, unrecognizably disfigured from the grenade blast, be mistakenly imprisoned in Abu Ghraib where he gets waterboarded and then assraped by an Iraqi guard.

DA, thank you ever so much for the links.

Yes indeed. I don’t think I’ve pestered my friends with an e-mailed link for a couple of years now, but this was pretty amazing.

PETER BEINART: But can one really say that life for Iraqis is better today?

WeikuBoy: When one refers to Iraqis today, is one referring only to the survivors?

Happy to pass on the links. Moyers rox. Weird to see so much of what we’ve monitored in drips and drabs, presented historically and big-picturishly as in this documentary. Viva la epic!

And it was history, the way the Beinarts lubed the way for the Cheneys and Chalabis to market such a monumentally evil adventure that has caused so much harm to the thems and uses and y’alls and future thems and uses and y’alls of the world.

If you’re old, hang your head … if you’re young, never fear, it’ll all happen againin 20 years time.

We fucking suck. Our only saving grace is that occasionally we recognize that fact.

Arrr, C&L don’t have the whole thing, matey! Torrent link: http://www.chomskytorrents.org/DownloadTorrent.php?TorrentID=4315
(Currently has 1 seed.)

If you’ve got mplayer, you can dump it to your hd with the following:
“mms://wm.z1.mii-streaming.net/media/pbs/windows/general/windows/wnet/moyers/journal/btw/BTW_part1_480.wmv?v1st=5A54C435CFC5C593” -dumpstream -dumpfile moyers1.wmv
(change “part1” to “part2”, “part3”, etc to get all 5 chapters)

Noy jitat! That should read
mplayer “mms://…” etc. And sorry about messing up the comments-section aesthetics.