Orcinus is generally pretty reliable blog.

I've sent emails to Glenn Reynolds about stuff and he seemed to care about the truth. For instance, there was a piece in the liberal Village Voice that accused McCain of covering up the POW/MIA stuff. And I wrote Glenn and told him that the POW/MIA stuff was mostly propaganda, in no other war did POW get linked to MIA. Because most MIA's are really KIA (killed in action), and in a jungle climate, the bodies decompose quickly. Anyway, the people pumping this myth were either a whitehouse in trouble over the war looking for someting that people could rally behind, or later politicians looking for a "wedge issue." But both McCain and Kerry have done a lot to put this issue to rest. Unfortunately, the ones who originally pushed this story are going to hell. That's because it plays on the emotions of family members -- how cruel.

After WWII, the US had control of all of the battlefields. And the numbers of MIA in that war was much higher, not just as an absolute number, but as a percentage of troops. In Vietnam, we didn't control the battlefield at the end of course. And though the theory was that the Vietnamese government was harboring prisoners as "bargaining chips," that government denied it. How can you bargain with something you deny having? The whole thing was kind of feeding on some racist fantasies about the "yellow devil" or whatever else. It never made any sense.

So I told old instapundit what I thought, and you know, it's not like he printed it as true to begin with. He was skeptical about it, and he couched it in those terms when he originally posted the story. So he was in the clear.

Looks like Dave Neiwart may have made a bigger error, if his story turns out not to be true.

Hmm. I finally read some of your other posts. Maybe I was too nice.

Are you saying that by criticizing the "commander in chief" we are insulting the soldiers? Is that why you never criticized Clinton? Or is it only the "commander in chief" when it's a Republican?

Also, how can you slander Kerry's service compared with Bush's? I don't get that.

Kerry never said that all soldiers were war criminals. He simply found out what a lot of them had to tell him. And there was some f****d up stuff going on in that war. Look up the Tiger Force -- a story which only just came to the light of day this very year -- and the well-known Phoenix Program, just for starters. I feel that Kerry's question remains a good one: how do you ask a young man to be the last one to die for a mistake?

Or, do you not feel that Vietnam was a mistake? Because most people now agree it was a big mistake.

That's just for starters. Anyway, I've thought about it.

Plenty of Democrats are combat veterans. It so happens the Republicans around Bush, none of them are. Not Cheney, not Bush. How dare you impugn Kerry for getting out after a "flesh wound." Oh yeah, I know, he's not the hero that Bush is? Come on.

I personally don't care if Kerry had the war experience or not. I liked other guys more, like Dean. That's just me. But it's pretty sad watching all of the flag-wavers who constantly try and act like only Republicans serve their country try and insult any Democrat who served. Come on. McGovern was decorated in WWII. Rangel is a combat veteran of Korea. Most of the other Democrats around served their country as well. Drop the culture war stuff, stop pretending that Democrats are traitors.

See, when Republicans keep saying over and over that Democrats are traitors, then they turn around and say "why is the country divided, boo-hoo," it doesn't wash. Bush could have unified the country, but he turned on us. He turned on half of us when we asked him why we should go into Iraq. He said "if you question this, you are a traitor." And so we got stampeded into it. We still don't know why we are there. Now it's a "humanitarian mission." The only people I know who buy that are Kurdish American dudes I've met. I don't blame them for thinking it.

As for the soldiers, they are valiant, brave, and all of that. But in spite what your community things, yes, thousands of young men are maimed now. It's a high price. It's a bit much seeing Bush make jokes about the WMD, like he did just the other day. And Brit Hume telling the families of dead and wounded soldiers to "get over it."

No, I can't get over the misuse of intelligence to get us involved in a shooting war. That's pretty bad. That's a major scandal. I think that Bush and his gang should be impeached. That's what I believe. I had no problem with Afghanistan. Did you see a lot of protests over that one? I don't remember any. Maybe a few leftwing pacifists. But I'll tell you another thing. The millions of Americans who think this Iraq war was a major blunder, they are not leftwing pacifists. That's another thing Bush likes to do, pretend that anyone who could possibly disagree with him is some kind of subversive.

I'm going to finish with James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy and conservative Republican. I know I put this in another comment already, but it deserves a repeat:

"Bush arguably has committed the greatest
strategic blunder in modern memory. To put it bluntly,
he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of
removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did far more
than that. He decapitated the government of a country
that was not directly threatening the United States
and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our
military in a region that never has known peace….

"There is no historical precedent for taking such
action when our country was not being directly
threatened. The reckless course that Bush and his
advisers have set will affect the economic and
military energy of our nation for decades. It is only
the tactical competence of our military that, to this
point, has protected him from the harsh judgment he
deserves.

"At the same time, those around Bush, many of whom
came of age during Vietnam and almost none of whom
served, have attempted to assassinate the character
and insult the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with
them. Some have impugned the culture, history and
integrity of entire nations, particularly in Europe,
that have been our country's great friends for
generations and, in some cases, for centuries."

attribution:
http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/column/zweifel/69161.php

Zac,
Everyone, from the United Nations on down to Senator Kerry believed that there were WMD.

I still think they may be found - in Syria or under great piles of desert.

Bush's big mistake was in pushing WMD for a reason for war more than the fact that Iraq was supporting and training terrorists. Most of us here in the hinterlands believe that going to war with Iraq was the right thing to do after Afghanistan. The War against Terror is succeeding. Alquaida has not had a successful attack on our soil since 9/11 even though they had many plans - why?

I am not impressed with Kerry's Purple Hearts because he used them for an early out in Vietnam. My father-in-law has 5 Purple Hearts from Vietnam and 2 from Korea - he would never, as an officer, asked to get out because of injuries. Kerry was supposed to be an officer - he didn't act like one.

Bush was in the Reserve - just like many people were who were called up to go to Vietnam - he did not run to England to avoid the draft like Clinton did.

I see people on the left with signs urging enlisted people to kill their officers. That is treason, and in any other country on earth, they would be rightly tried and imprisoned for such action.

Anyway, this post was to applaud David for being honest about possibly passing on what certainly appears to be false story as fact.

I noticed that he didn't address his contention within the deleted post about how it illustrates that it's just the beginning of right-wing fascists using thuggery, or how the incident shows that Georgia needs hate crimes, or how he was holding his breath awaiting Reynolds' mentioning the story.

IOW, removing the "story" is fine, but the seething opinion therein (that was founded on the story) was overlooked. How convenient.

No matter.....the hatred remains.

Thanks for the response Beth.

Let's get down to brass tacks: if Bush was a combat veteran and Kerry had been in the Guard, I wouldn't agree with Bush anymore than I do now.

But I don't think you'd be disparaging Bush if he had gotten a purple heart and a silver star or whatever and opted out of further combat. I think you selectively choose who to disparage and who not, based on political affiliation. That was what I was getting at, anyway.

As for the war on terrorism, there's been a big increase in terrorism globally. I think the evidence is that we are losing a lot of ground by being in Iraq.

Iraq supported Palestinian terrorism. I think we committed a blunder in that we are now turning Hamas into Al Qaeda. They used to pick on Israel. We ought to be isolating Al Qaeda and working on that situation in Israel separately. I think we could do that without abandoning our friend Israel. Instead we're making Al Qaeda look more reasonable, I'm afraid, by appearing totally biased to the Arab world.

Please don't caricature what I just said as "appeasing." That's not what I aim to do. As I said, it's about increasing your circle of friends, allies, in your effort, while isolating your enemy. Of course there's a PR war to be won with regard to the Arab world.

Actually, let me restate that. Instead of Arab world, I should have said "Muslim world."

Part of the strategy in war ought to be making your enemies as isolated as possible while increasing your circle of allies. I think the Iraq war, no, I *know* the Iraq war has done the opposite: we have increased Al Qaeda's popularity and isolated ourselves, relatively speaking. Plenty of conservatives have a sneaking suspicion that I'm right.

Part of the reason that everyone assumed that Iraq had some WMD is that the administration lied about it. When I say "lie," that includes distorting evidence by selectively choosing supporting evidence and burying counter evidence.

There was plenty of suspicion that Iraq didn't have WMD as well. The UN inspectors couldn't find any. Every time the we said "look here" the inspectors came up empty. I remember thinking, it sure looks like Iraq doesn't have the WMD.

Part of the reason you didn't hear more of that is the Democrats were so chicken**** that they never uttered a peep. Who would want to turn out to be wrong about the WMD, especially when the administration has all of the classified intelligence?

The administration kept saying, "we have all of this evidence," but whenever we got to see it, it turned out to be bogus: yellowcake from Niger. That made people suspicious. Drip drip drip drip. The case for WMD started to take on water. Bush pushed for war more and more urgently, as the justification was already unravelling.

Weapons in Syria? That's not what David Kay is saying. That's not a credible claim. Tommy Franks says there's no way Iraq could have gotten the tons and tons of WMD that Colin Powell said they had, out of the country. We have satellites. That theory is discredited. David Kay is no Democrat. Listen to what he says. Let's not play games here.

Iraq didn't have WMD. The search is now shifting focus to "intent." But I'd just like to put that to rest, and don't talk to me about the sands of Syria. Fool me once... I'm not buying the WMD fantasies a second time.

But thanks for the very civil and kind response.

Zac, you need your own blog, dude. You've got too much to say to just bury it in comments everywhere.