I'm not sure what relevance the ratio of US troop casualties to 9/11 victims has to the rightness or wrongness of military intervention.

If the deaths of the nearly 3000 9/11 victims was a tragedy--and it certainly was--then the deaths of over 3000 mostly young Americans in Iraq is at least as great a tragedy. People were outraged over the first, so why not over the second, seeing as it was begun on false pretenses and has failed to achieve its objectives? Hasn't the Iraq invasion been even worse for the nation than the 9/11 attacks? And we did this to ourselves. Such a huge loss can only be justified by necessity or a countervailing advantage. Neither obtains. Therefore, the invasion of Iraq was a major error.

And, as you are certainly aware, the Republicans have admitted many times that mistakes have been made.

Yes, that's the Republicans' favorite phrase, from Nixon on: "Mistakes have been made." Well, who made the mistakes? I suggest it was the people who were in charge. They screwed things up royally, from the invasion decision on. Why support those people? They have proven they are screwups.

That's patently false. As much as you'd like to think otherwise, 'disagreement with char' does not equal 'unconcern for Iraqis'.

You have explicitly said you weren't concerned about the people we killed in war, because these were "the enemy". But in Vietnam and Iraq, the "enemy" are the inhabitants of that country. I trust that most of the people our forces kill are "hostiles", but unfortunately there are the inevitable errors, bystander deaths, and the rare Hadithas. I don't believe the 650,000 figure that was noised about a couple months ago, but at a minimum tens of thousands of Iraqis, many of them civilians, have died, some at our hand but mostly in inernecine violence during our occupation. The first duty of an occupier is to the civilians it is occupying, so we can fairly be said to bear some responsibility for the astonishingly high level of violence in Iraq. I merely contrast the sentiments I get from you and others concerning those horrendous casualty rates with the crocodile tears shed for Saddam's victims during the period when Reagan and Rumsfeld were providing him assistance. It was never about the Iraqis for you guys, and it isn't now.

I'm certain they do get upset. But what's so unusual about that? These Islamic extremists/terrorists are perpetually 'upset' about everything. Iraq is just the latest excuse. If it's not Iraq, it's political cartoons in a Danish newspaper. If it's not cartoons, it's a Winnie the Pooh doll on a co-worker's desk. If it's not Winnie the Pooh dolls, it's Muslim prisoners upset about the direction their toilets are facing. In short, there's nothing that DOESN'T upset them.

You're evading the point. I'm not talking about those who were already committed Islamic extremists/terrorists. Those were extremely rare in Iraq before we invaded. I'm talking about all the people who are now trying to kill Americans who weren't before. Their attitude changed after we invaded and occupied their country. And there are hundreds of millions outside of Iraq who are upset about what we're doing to their fellow Muslims. These people aren't terrorists (or weren't, anyway) but the invasion radicalized them and made them susceptible to the blandishments of the religious fanatics. This was a huge error, one I explicitly warned about but which you guys seem determined not to face up to.

And it is inane, childish comments like this that make it very difficult to take you seriously sometimes. I'm confident that in your more lucid moments, even you see the silliness of these sorts of comments.

I was dead serious, and in your thoughtful moments, I hope you can put together a response that explains how it is that through every twist and turn in the last six years, you have defended the exact policies of George W Bush. It can't be because of principle or evidence, because we now know the counterfactuality of the claims underlying the invasion. Whether it's torture, domestic spying, or troop levels, I never see you disagree with anything Bush does or says. For instance, what makes 21,500 the exact number of extra troops that will turn the tide in Iraq? Why weren't you howling when troop strength was reduced earlier, then? The only common thread behind every one of the exchanges I've had with you on Iraq is that you were supporting the policies of Bush, whether he was reducing troop strength or increasing it, working with the Shi'ite militia leaders or against them, washing his hands of the Abu Ghraib idiots or standing behind similar (unphotographed) behavior in Guantanamo, supporting Rumsfeld or firing him, blaming Tenet or pinning a medal on him. The only conclusion I can draw is that you simply do and think whatever Bush wants you to about Iraq.

I have no trouble praising Bush for the rapid, successful ousting of the Taliban, or his principled decision to allow press freedom in Iraq (though I wonder about the strikes on al-Jazeera stations), and his quick acquiescence to Sistani's insistence on early elections. I had no trouble criticizing Clinton for what I considered errors on his part, like the strike on the Sudanese aspirin factory (the missiles aimed at OBL made sense to me then and now) or his sleazy sexual dalliance. Ron and I were arguing on TLI about the differences between cons and libs, and this seems to be a big one. There's a tendency on the right to slavishly follow the Leader which I believe I have correctly identified as quasi-fascist. It is accompanied by a reflexive urge to brand your opponents as unpatriotic, confirming the diagnosis.

Somehow I doubt this post will remain the last word. Call it a hunch.