Joshua Micah Marshall takes note of the fact that even William F. Buckley (no wild-eyed Liberal, he) thinks the war in Iraq was a colossal mistake, and lays out a simple case against it.
Over in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof admonishes people who call George W. Bush a liar. I buy some but not all of his argument. Okay, it destroys polite discourse to call Bush that…but the alternate explanation that Kristof supplies is that Bush unknowingly took this nation to war based on false pretenses. Is that really a nicer thing to say about someone? I don't see how calling someone a liar "polarizes the political cesspool," to use Mr. Kristof's terminology, but saying that the person allowed himself to be duped into a war that cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars is keeping things civil. If I were in that position, I think I'd almost prefer that they call me a liar. Secondly, a lot of the reason we have nutcase conspiracy theories in this country — about the Clintons or Bush or any of our leaders — is that the leading reporters of news (like, say, The New York Times) aren't doing a good enough job of asking hard questions and testing the validity of accusations and rumors.
One trivial point of interest in the above: Kristof's review says that the name of Michael Moore's movie is Farenheit 9/11. Mr. Moore seems to think it's Fahrenheit 9/11, and the rest of the New York Times is siding with Moore. Even their weather reports spell the word "Fahrenheit." Remember when the Times was famous for not making that kind of mistake?