Must…not…click…on…link…damn.

Hearing Dean Esmay lecturing about who is “a liberal or a progressive or a humanist,” is like hearing Charles Krauthammer lecture about morality. It usually goes badly when you ignore the first rule of writing: write what you know about.

But, since I've already suffered it, let’s break down the foundation of the argument, shall we:

"The fact is that the naysayers claimed we weren't really striving for liberation. We were. They claimed we'd install a new puppet dictator. We did not. They claimed that we wouldn't really try to set up a democracy. We did. They claimed there would be no legitimate elections. The Iraqis had three national elections in a row, all certified as legitimate by international observers, not even counting the local elections that were held before that.

They claimed we'd do everything possible to get out of the country "before the next elections"--they claimed that before the 2004 elections and again before the 2006 elections. It didn't happen. Now these same people in many cases are cheering for a Congress that's trying to force us out of Iraq even though the war supporters consistently say "no, that would be morally and strategically wrong."

Opponents who understood what was happening said the Bush administration was going into Iraq to protect oil and Israel. We knew that because the architects of the war had already told us. We also now know that the plan was to use “liberation” and “democratic” elections to install a puppet government. They failed (apparently Iraqis aren’t as easy to fool as Republican voters).
"Naysayers" also claimed that we were building a permanent military presence there (we are) not that “we'd do everything possible to get out of the country ‘before the next elections.’"

So, Rosemary, you agree 100% with a bunch of lies, straw men, irrelevancies, falsehoods and absurd conclusions. And you agree 100% with the notion that your leaders spent the lives of half a million innocent Iraqis (so far), more than 3,200 American soldiers (so far), over 24,000 wounded (so far) and a half a trillion US tax dollars, all for the purpose of liberating the population of another country.

Nobody doesn’t want to see a beautiful, peaceful, democratic Iraq, it’s just that those who haven’t lost their senses to the Republican cult know who has destroyed any such possibility. We’re not “Ameriphobic,” we’re not even GOPphobic™. We’re not afraid of Republicans, they just need to be kept away from public office for everyone's good.