Author: Matt Barganier

…will win the war in Iraq, according to National Review blogger and Reason contributing editor John Hood. Which prompts Matthew Yglesias to ask a question I’ve entertained many times over the years when reading Hood’s Iraq-related comments on Reason‘s blog: Is John Hood a robot?

In Iran.

Surely you didn’t think Michael Ledeen would rile up his yahoo readers by dissing America the virtuous, did you? Naw, Michael’s been wavin’ the Stars & Stripes, drinkin’ Gallo, and dancin’ to John Philip Sousa over there in Italy. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with the US of A, no-siree. Now let’s go liberate them long-sufferin’ Iranian dope fiends!

A U.S. soldier in Afghanistan describes his work:

Yes . . . F—ING Yes!!! I LOVE MY JOB, it takes everything reckless and deviant and heathenistic and just overall bad about me and hyper focuses these traits into my job of running around this horrid place doing nasty things to people that deserve it . . . and some that don’t.

Mighty white of him to allow that some Afghans might not deserve to have nasty things done to them. Just goes to show you the value of a good upbringing.

By the way, it’s no wonder the U.S. military is trying to keep GIs offline. The MySpace page quoted above “included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned ‘My Sweet Little Habib’; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.” Of course, as Jonathan Schwarz notes, this may all be an al-Qaeda plot to discredit a great American bulwark against dhimmitude.

Clearly, there are too many candidates to give all of the different points of view a fair hearing. What to do? I suggest two podiums. Behind podium one, Ron Paul; behind podium two, the other nine, in an orderly, grade-school water-fountain line. After each question from the moderator, Ron Paul answers. In rebuttal, the other nine take turns howling “America, F*ck Yeah!“

In an interview with The American Prospect, liberal interventionist darling and Ahmed Chalabi lackey Kanan Makiya lets slip just how much he knows about present-day Iraq:

“Of course I still support the war,” he says with a pained expression on his face. “How can I not? I don’t know an Iraqi who doesn’t.”

The whole swig of ipecac is here, behind the Prospect‘s registration firewall (an endearing feature Antiwar.com will have to consider if we don’t reach our quarterly fundraising goal). At least it ends on a hopeful – wildly, excessively hopeful – note:

Makiya has the courage of his convictions. Yet not all Iraqis, liberals, or European intellectuals share his view. In Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower, Zbigniew Brzezinski said the Iraq War’s “only saving grace is that it made Iraq the cemetery of neocon dreams.” It raises the question of whether or not this also the final resting place for the dream of liberal-interventionism.

Well, we’re four days into our quarterly fund drive – and it’s going lousy. I was planning to remind you how time is money… and how much time Antiwar.com saves you each day, collecting, reviewing, organizing, and updating hundreds of news items and opinion pieces … and how I bet you checked the site on Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s – and found new content, just like every other day… and how we bring you exclusive commentary from the likes of Justin Raimondo, Alan Bock, Doug Bandow, David R. Henderson, Charles Peña, Philip Giraldi, Nebojsa Malic, Ran HaCohen, and many more… and how there’s simply no other venue, online or in print or on-air, that even comes close to our level of focused coverage… and how I haven’t noticed any global outbreaks of lamb-lion love that might justify letting this site wither away – how, in fact, each day’s stories portend fresh horrors…

But that would be one bummer of a sermon, and anyway, I found this upbeat testimonial from Vanity Fair‘s James Wolcott to share instead:

Upon rising from my bed of nails (keeps me sharp–on the edge–where I gotta be) each morning, I begin my blog day with a high-impact megadose of Antiwar, the premiere site for tracking the dogs of war and their latest foamings and the softer mewings of the compliant press. Its prescience in identifying the neocon arguments for war against Iraq as specious, fearmongering, and a betrayal of this country’s ideals is there in the archives, and each day it refuses to flinch from the butcherhouse debauchery the Bush administration and the neocon architects have unleashed. The best thing about Antiwar is that it’s ecumenical in its anti-empire coverage, giving voice and space to opponents of the war whether they be libertarian, conservative, traditionally liberal, or far lefty. …

Antiwar is holding a fundraiser this week and I entreat you to cough up a little for the causes of peace, justice, truth, liberty, and good old American cussedness.

Listen to the man.