Blog News & Putz hearts Lieberman.

Due to travel, things are going to be pretty slow around here until January 4th.

However, a reader pointed out this putzy post about Lieberman that I couldn't leave alone.

Because of the bravery of many Iraqi and coalition military personnel and the recent coming together of moderate political forces in Baghdad, the war is winnable. We and our Iraqi allies must do what is necessary to win it.

I agree, even though our winning will disappoint some people.

Here's a question: at what point will Putz stop quoting/agreeing with/approvingly citing people who've been Wrong About Everything?

Joe Lieberman, July 2006:

So I am confident that the situation is improving enough on the ground that by the end of this year, we will begin to draw down significant numbers of American troops, and by the end of the next year more than half of the troops who are there now will be home.

I think we should probably start listening to some people who, at least on occasion, have been right about this stuff.

Would you take foreign policy advice from this man?

Unhinged.

Via Atrios, Yglesias find this post by Putz distressing. I'm sympathetic, of course, but nothing Putz writes could ever surprise me at this point.

Does this mean we're winning?

Blogging has been light due to travel and the holidays, but I'm back, though not at 100%. Hey, you'd need a break too if you had to read the Putz all the time.

I know that by actually keeping track of the dead, unserious lefties empower the terrorists, but this is a pretty sad milestone we've reached.

Haditha.

My post on Putz's coverage of Haditha is over at Unclaimed Territory.

Putz's finger-wagging at the media.

Check out my post on Putz's hypocritical criticism of the media today here.

If you just came from there, why not bookmark Instaputz, so you never have to read Instapundit again?

The Nitpicker has a message for Putz.

And it's a good one.

My post today on the death of the "commanders on the ground" talking point can be found at Unclaimed Territory.

Oh, for crying out loud.

Someone make him stop. Please.

ANOTHER WORRISOME QUESTION ON THE WAR: "What if we are winning?"

Wingnuts heart the Hammer, plus Putz on Duke.

My post today on the pathetic spectacle of the right wing blogosphere's embrace of Tom DeLay can be found at Unclaimed Territory here.

Meanwhile, at Putz's place, he's still talking about the Duke rape case.

Why?

I must admit, I'm here to scrutinize everything he does, and I can't for the life of me figure out why he dedicates post after post after post to what amounts to a local news story. The sheer volume of posts about the subject is getting weirder every day.

I have some theories, but none of them are very nice, and I hate to make unsubstantiated accusations. It just seems like overkill.

But decide for yourself.

Iraq's economy is booming!

A ridiculous headline and a ridiculous article from the liberal media, brought to you by the Putz. For more analysis, see Tristram Shandy.

Putz's Iraq Symposium fizzles.

You can find my post today about Putz's Iraq Symposium at Unclaimed Territory.

Blog news.

I'll be guest blogging over at Unclaimed Territory this week, so blogging will be lighter than usual here.

One aside: it appears Castro's not dying after all. This will no doubt be cause for celebration in American newsrooms.

Putz's gal is going to Iraq.

You've probably heard by now, but Pajamas queen Michelle Malkin is going to Iraq. Maybe. Anyway, this jumped out:

There are people on both sides of the blogosphere who think this is some kind of joke. Others are using it as yet another opportunity to hurl slime, hate, and stupidity. You want to see me shot in the face or dead. Ha, ha, ha.

Why on Earth would she get shot in the face or killed? I mean, she's not going to Philadelphia or anything.

Geez, Michelle -- way to buy into the whole MSM anti-Bush spin about how violent Iraq is.

More Hanson.

Shorter Victor Davis Hanson: Sending 30,000 more troops to Iraq will work if we also bomb Syria and Iran, but it's likely to fail, since Democrats keep undermining the President by talking to Arab leaders. At least we're better off than the French army was in 1940.

Bob Barr no longer a Republican.

Matt Ortega over a SOTUblog notes that Bob Barr has officially left the GOP.

Bob Barr, who served eight years as a Republican congressman before losing his seat in 2002, announced Friday that he is now a "proud, card-carrying Libertarian." And he encouraged others to join him.

"It's something that's been bothering me for quite some time, the direction in which the party has been going more and more toward big government and disregard toward privacy and civil liberties," said Barr, 58, a lawyer and consultant living in Atlanta. "In terms of where the country needs to be going to get back to our constitutional roots … I've come to the conclusion that the only way to do that is to work with a party that practices what it preaches, and that is the Libertarian Party."

Interesting, isn't it? Barr, a staunch GOPer for years, leaves the GOP because it isn't libertarian enough. Putz, who claims he's a libertarian, votes Republican.

Jonah Goldberg's wager.

Atrios revisits Goldberg's crass wager offer to Juan Cole, who had too much class to take the bet. It's worth citing here, because it represents exactly the same kind of misguided and smug triumphalism that Putz has continuously exhibited about Iraq.

Are Goldberg and Putz embarrassed that they were so wrong?

Anyway, I do think my judgment is superior to his when it comes to the big picture. So, I have an idea: Since he doesn't want to debate anything except his own brilliance, let's make a bet. I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now). This way neither of us can hide behind clever word play or CV reading. If there's another reasonable wager Cole wants to offer which would measure our judgment, I'm all ears. Money where your mouth is, doc. One caveat: Because I don't think it's right to bet on such serious matters for personal gain, if I win, I'll donate the money to the USO. He can give it to the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or whatever his favorite charity is.

Classic Putz: the Amanda Across America interview.

Putz's interview with Amanda is here. Note that he defines a conservative as one who "supports the war on terror" (whatever the hell that means) and that he equates his politics with Hillary Clinton's.

Credibility (2 updates, below).

Putz, 9/21/06:

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS: "The Army is ending its best recruiting year since 1997 and expecting similar success in 2007 . . .

Putz, 5/18/2006:

STRATEGYPAGE: In the last seven months, the U.S. Army has met or exceeded all of its recruiting goals...

Putz, 4/10/2006:

GOOD NEWS: "Two of every three eligible soldiers continue to re-enlist, putting the Army, which has endured most of the fighting in Iraq, ahead of its annual goal."

Today, 12/15/06:

Warning that the active-duty U.S. Army will break under the strain of today's war zone rotations, the top Army general called Thursday for expanding the force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year and lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker issued his most dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the nation's main ground force. At one point, he banged his hand on a House committee room table, saying the continuation of today's mistaken Pentagon policies was "not right."

The burden on the Army's 507,000 active-duty soldiers, who now spend more time at war than at home, is simply too great, he said. "At this pace, without recurrent access to the reserve components, through remobilization, we will break the active component," he said, provoking murmurs around the hearing room.

UPDATE:

Glenn Greenwald has a related post about Putz's and other "conservative" bloggers judgement.

UPDATE 2:

Putz has now written a lengthy post about this very topic. Coincidence?

Notice how he nearly breaks his own arm, patting himself on the back for his prescience. "Back in 2004, in the face of good news about recruitment and retention, I observed: "Nonetheless, I suspect that it's a good time to be looking at enlarging the military and adjusting the force structure."

2004? How about 2006, when you kept starting every post about the Army and recruiting with "GOOD NEWS" and linked to every possible positively spun statistic on the subject? But don't take my word for it, check out this list and see how Putz has covered the subject.

Also, note that he doesn't seem the least bit bothered that Bush's war of choice in Iraq, which he has mindlessly supported and insisted has been going just splendidly, is the root cause of the Army being at the point of breaking, as the General said. And yet, it's all Clinton's fault.

Remarkable.

Putz's pandering.

An astute reader writes:

I longer read Instapundit. The willful blindess to the situation in Iraq was one turn-off; the "hey have you seen my new $2,000 camera" posts were others.

But really, I just see the blog as a mass of wasted potential. When he was A.G. Android on Slate's The Fray, Instapundit was a genuinely interesting and provocative poster who followed his libertarianism wherever it went. The first month of Instapundit was a revelation, too: His posts on the stem-cell debate (he was for it) were honest-to-God good.

Then September 11. And Iraq. And suddenly he was calling the media and all dissenters traitors, refusing for one minute to seriously consider the possibilities of restraint. The first warning sign for me came in early 2002, when he accused a newspaper of calling for the assassination of George Bush after they ran an editorial praising the Army's victory in Afghanistan and noting that the Army did so despite Bush's claims in 2000 that Clinton had systematically gutted the armed forces. That seemed a bit much (even conservative Patrick Ruffini told him so).

And then Iraq, and so on, and suddenly he was a LINO. To justify his unblinking support of the war, he linked to increasingly extreme websites, which necessarily turned his readership rightward. The attitude changed, too: Early on in the blog, he met accusations of bias by claiming that it was just a hobby and that he would quit any time it stopped being fun. With the ads and the TechCentral and MSNBC deals, he no longer says that. I suspect (without proof) that it's become a money-making venture for him. He's created a generally right-wing audience that will not brook any dissent from the party line. They give him their support, and he gives them to advertisers -- but he must know that not feeding them red meat will lead to mass defections. Note the mass abandonment of Andrew Sullivan when he questioned the conduct of the war; note the "de-linking" campaign when Reynolds said he didn't think the ACLU was all bad. Whatever Reynolds' feeling are, my guess is that Instapundit will stop making money if/when he ever fully questions the conduct of the war.

So, he links to sites like that one [Confederate Yankee]. His audience demands it. In some ways, I feel bad for Reynolds: He's become a willing prisoner of his readers. And he's squandered a real chance to offer a new sort of dialogue in the country.

Indeed, though I don't feel bad for Putz.

I would add to this excellent analysis only a couple of thoughts. One, he doesn't want a dialog, since he doesn't allow comments. And two, by transmitting the worst disinformation and the vilest partisan attacks, Putz is actually hurting the country.

A bully pulpit like his comes with responsibility and he abdicated it long ago.

Why can't the media report the good news from Darfur for a change?

(A typically unbalanced picture of Darfur from the media. Why is the smiling child not in the center?)

Putz and Laura Bush are absolutely right. The media needs to start telling both sides and stop focusing on all the negative stories all the time. There's lots of good things happening that aren't covered.

Take the situation Darfur, for example. I mean, did you know that over 6,000 Sudanese children received polio vaccinations last month? I bet you didn't, because the media only reports the bad things.

[/snark]

Fact-checking Putz's links.

Like most right wingers, Putz is convinced that the media has an anti-American/anti-Bush bias, and his continuous and often venomous attacks on the free press have been well documented on this blog.

There are scores of laughable contradictions and absurdities in his ongoing "we're losing the war because of the pro-terror media" campaign. But one of the most glaring is his insistence that news organizations' reporting is distorted because of their bias, that they make stuff up, and that they are unreliable because of this supposed bias, while he links daily to partisan bloggers who distort, make stuff up and are unreliable.

That is the background behind this brief post.

MORE PEOPLE checking the A.P.'s work in Iraq.

And who are these people, from whom we should get the real story in Iraq? Who are these noble agents of truth and accuracy? This link is to Confederate Yankee, the far-right blogger whose blog is subtitled, "Because liberalism is a persistent vegetative state."

Let's check a little of Confederate Yankees' recent work.

11/17/2006

Please, tell us why the terrorists that overwhelming [sic] cheered for Democratic victories in the mid-terms [sic] should view a withdrawal from Iraq as anything other than a validation of their tactics and assumptions of how to best to conquer the world.

11/6/2006

Consider the historical fact that such polls tend to oversample [sic] Democrats and undersample [sic] Republicans, and I think we stand a pretty decent possibility of seeing Republicans being able to declare victory in both the House and Senate, if by narrower margins than what they currently hold.Final Prediction. I'll go out on a limb and predict that the Republicans hold the House by six seats and the Senate by three.

10/23/06

Only those on the anti-war left ever (purposefully) misstated that Iraq was involved with the terrorist attacks of September 11, and only the anti-war left ever stated that Saddam's Iraq received uranium from Niger. The Bush Adminstration [sic] did not hold those positions.

6/16/06

Saddam to al Tikriti to Atta. A strong link from Iraq to 9/11. Add this to evidence that Saddam gave money and housing to Abdul Rahman Yasin, the 1993 World Trade Center bomb builder, and I'd say that you're looking at evidence that Saddam was linked to attacks on the World Trade Center not once, but twice.

1/7/2006

Murtha's treason--and I do now classify it as such-- is even more shameful in my opinion, as he seeks to undermine not only the United States while at war, but he seeks to undermine another nation, Iraq, that has shown a stronger commitment to democracy each time it has been tested at the ballot box.

6/1/2005

Critics of the Bush administration have been quick to point out that attacks by the insurgency have not declined since the Iraqi elections, and that the numbers of attacks have actually increased. While technically accurate, this criticism misses the larger context that seems to bolster Cheney's that the insurgency is in its "last throes."… It is quite likely that any widespread insurgency in Iraq will fall apart well before the end of the Bush administration. It is possible that the insurgency will collapse by early 2007, and it could conceivably devolve from its current level of operations into local, cell-level operations with little or no widespread planning and coordination capabilities by as early as late 2005.

2/11/2005

It seems to me, based upon the words of Iran's mullahcracy, that taking them out now is the only sensible course of action. Better a little burning Hell now than a purpetual [sic] glow later.

Pajamas Putziness.

Simon Says it's not only a waste of time but "obscene" for Bill Nelson to talk to Syria, since they're all murderous lying dirty Baathists and can't be trusted.

Apparently, the President's father didn't get that memo.

UPDATE:


(The clueless Harry Truman and Winston Churchill, in their criminally stupid and pointless summit with Joseph Stalin.)

Greenwald smacks Putz around again.

(Photo: a flatworm.)

Glenn Greenwald examines the Putzian connection between guns, flatworms and Iraq.

Texas turns a little bluer.

And the rout continues.

Former U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez defeated seven-term Republican incumbent Henry Bonilla in a runoff Tuesday, adding another Democrat to Congress and deciding Texas' final congressional seat.

How's that immigration issue workin' out for ya, GOP?

National Journal's Charles Mahtesian, who is the editor of the Almanac of American Politics, observes: "Take a look at these remarkable numbers in Maverick County. Bonilla won it with 59% in 2004, even as Kerry was carrying the county; Bonilla lost it 86-14% tonight. Maverick County is a border county and home to Eagle Pass, where the border fence issue was huge. Bonilla's vote in favor of a fence made an enormous difference here.

So what does all this mean?

Democrats now have 233 seats in the 110th congress, more than Republicans have had since 1952.

We're living in a very unserious and possibly terror-emboldening nation.

Pajamas Putziness.

Shorter No Pasaran!: "BBC Radio interviewed David Duke, which proves they're Nazi propagandists."

Hmmm. If the BBC is Goebbles for interviewing Duke, what does that make the GOP?

Civil Rights.

(Putz, left, sporting a civil rights shirt.Various other wingnuttery, pictured.)

I should be used to it by now, but I have to say, I'm getting really sick and tired of Putz's snarky use of the term "civil rights."

A CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY IN OHIO -- where the Republican Governor was opposed to civil rights, and Democrats supported them. "In practical effect, the Ohio bill is the most significant roll-back of gun control that has ever been enacted by a state."

So because Taft favors gun control of any kind, he's "opposed to civil rights." Nice. So are majority of Ohioans.

A poll released Tuesday showed a majority of Ohio voters agree with Taft — 54 percent of respondents to a Quinnipiac University poll said they thought it was a bad idea for the state to have the power to override local gun control laws. Thirty-five percent thought it was a good idea.

35% sounds about right -- the same flavor of nut that still supports President Bush, thinks Iraq is going great, and think it's funny to repurpose "civil rights" for guns.

People like Putz.

Putz, the libertarian.

This post about libertarians abandoning Bush in 2004 seems oddly familiar. Hmmm.

Oh, right.

American reporters love Castro.

Who knew?

That's the great thing about Putz. You learn something new every day.

Putz wins "Most Overrated" award!

Congratulations to the Putz, who cleaned up at Right Wing News' Fifth Annual "Warblogger" Awards. Not only did he win "Most Overrated", he took home the most coveted prize of all -- the "Best Linker" Award.

(Yes, "Best Linker" is an actual award. Apparently, "Best Typist" and "Best Spell-Checker" have been discontinued.)

So congratulations, Putz. Even your right wing readership thinks you suck.

You can take the Snow out of Fox News...

Just like Putz and the wingnutosphere, Tony Snow doesn't seem to want to talk about Gordon Smith's calling the war in Iraq "criminal."

Q Republican Senator Smith is challenging the strategy. What he basically said yesterday, as well, was, when you do the same thing over and over again without a clear strategy for victory, that is dereliction, that is deeply immoral. Such is the dispute. He's saying what the President is doing is immoral.

MR. SNOW: Well, then we disagree.

Q You're just going to blow it off? A Republican senator is saying the President's policy may be criminal and it's immoral, and you're just saying, we just disagree?

MR. SNOW: And what would you like me to say? Should I do duels at 10 paces?

But Snow was a lot more, erm, talkative before the election about another Senator's comments about Iraq.

"Senator Kerry not only owes an apology to those who are serving, but also to the families of those who've given their lives in this,'' the spokesman said in response to a question at a White House briefing. ``This is an absolute insult.''

...

11/1/06

Q Can I just follow on that? Do you feel that Senator Kerry offered a sufficient explanation and apology in his appearance this morning?

MR. SNOW: You're talking about the Imus appearance? Two words, really -- two words were sufficient to convey an apology: I'm sorry. And he hasn't -- I think Senator Kerry is -- I think he's insistent on pointing fingers at the President, or whatever, rather than simply saying -- look, it's real simple; you and I and everybody in this room have said things that we didn't intend to say, and when it offends people, you say, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say it, I'm wrong. And he hasn't done that. All he has to do -- it's really easy -- say, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend the troops. But instead there's always, I'm not going to apologize for going after the President. Fine. But there are troops out there who are clearly unhappy.

You've seen it today. You've got a number of Democrats who are stepping up, saying, he needs to apologize. So don't take it from me, take it from members of his own party.

Q Does the President actually believe that Senator Kerry intended to criticize the troops?

MR. SNOW: I don't know. Intention or not, as you've seen it, when you say things publicly, you've got to answer for them. I've had to do it; you guys were pouncing on the Vice President last week over something. Senator Kerry's words were pretty straightforward, and if you listen to the tone of voice in which he said them, it's hard to construe them as a joke. He didn't sound like he was trying to make funnies. But again, look, this is simple. There was an insult delivered to troops, whether it was intended or not, and the way you clean the slate is say, I didn't mean to say it, I'm sorry.

...

MR. SNOW: You know, I don't think it really matters what the President thinks Senator Kerry intended to say. What matters is what Senator Kerry needs to say for members of his own party, to the American Legion, to AMVETS, to a number of other organizations who have come out and simply said, you need to apologize for what you said. It's not hard: I'm sorry. I mean this is helpful advice: Just say, I'm sorry, I messed up, please forgive me.

...

Q Let me ask you this, though, because in reading the transcript, it's pretty clear Senator Kerry was in the middle of going after the President when he said this. Do you agree with that?

MR. SNOW: No, I don't, because if you look at it -- look, he had the warm-up period where apparently he was trying to tell jokes. And then he said, let's talk about education -- and you have the transition. Now, usually when somebody says, let's talk about education, that doesn't mean that he's ready to fire off the rib-ticklers. It means that it's time to start talking about a serious topic. And if you listen -- Jim, have you looked at the tape?

Q Sure.

MR. SNOW: I mean, does it look like he's trying to tell a joke?

Q -- obviously, it's a nebulous thing to figure out. You can read the transcript, which he obviously dropped what it looked like in the prepared remarks should have been, "Just ask President Bush," assuming these are correct, the prepared remarks. But he was saying, the President lives in a state of denial. And then he goes to another one where -- that he obviously botched. My question is, is there a difference in your mind -- because the AMVETS and the American Legion, everybody who is calling for Senator Kerry to apologize, would be, if, indeed, he maligned the troops. If he was just going after the President, that's a different story.

MR. SNOW: Okay, real simple question. Do the following words malign the troops? "You know, education if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make the effort to be smart, you can do well, and if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Those are the words. That's not the intention. We're sitting here trying to do mind-reading. We're not playing the "what if" game. Do those words insult the troops? Apparently, troops believe so.

Q But he has to be interpreting it in a way that Kerry has clearly said he did not mean it -- he has to be saying that Kerry is lying.

MR. SNOW: What Senator Kerry said is, I believe, that he forgot a word. Then you try to put the word in, and it doesn't work. And then he said, no, I really meant to insult the Commander-in-Chief in a time of war. That's probably not an argument he wants to make either in terms of support for the troops. But the President is referring to what he said and what Senator Kerry, when it came out, said, I apologize to no one for it. Now, it seems to me that all he has to do is take back the statement.

Kerry botches a joke at Pasadena City College about Bush, and clarifies the remark -- and Snow spends several days publicly condemning him and demanding an apology. A Republican Senator calls the Iraq war "criminal" and says we should "cut and run" on the Senate floor and Snow and the right wing echo chamber shrug.

So predictable.

He should be reading "Cobra II."

This explains quite a lot. (Updated below)

SO I FINISHED THE JOEL ROSENBERG NOVEL that I mentioned last week, and it's very good.

This is the novel's cover artwork. No further comment is necessary.



Update: Putz writes,

In an interesting confluence of reactions, some readers are turned off by the garish cover, while others who have read it say the book's got too much talk and internal dialogue.

Some readers? I think he meant "all readers who stopped playing Dungeons and Dragons in 1986."

"The declining fortunes of the Taliban."

That's what Putz wrote on 9/21/06, in a link to a StrategyPage "we're kicking their ass" post.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth...

Peace deals between Islamic militants and Pakistan's government have created a virtual Taliban mini-state near Afghanistan, giving militants a "free hand" to recruit, train and arm for cross-border attacks, a think tank reported Monday...The government denied the allegation, but a U.S. military official in Afghanistan confirmed that cross-border attacks had surged this summer and fall, amid the bloodiest violence since the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001 for hosting al-Qaida.

From the Iraq Study Group:

[W]e must not lose sight of the importance of the situation inside Afghanistan and the renewed threat posed by the Taliban. Afghanistan's borders are porous. If the Taliban were to control more of Afghanistan, it could provide al Qaeda the political space to conduct terrorist operations...The huge focus of U.S. political, military, and economic support on Iraq has necessarily diverted attention from Afghanistan.

Will Putz post a correction?

Putz mocks Reyes, gives Republicans a pass.

The non-partisan cheap-shots the new Democratic chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

SUNNI, SHIITE, WHATEVER: The first team isn't coming in, but hey, at least he's not Alcee Hastings!

Putz's snarkiness and sarcasm would be so much more effective if he actually read his links. If he'd bothered to do so, he would've found this passage in the original source.

To his credit, Reyes...knows that the 1,400- year-old split in Islam between Sunnis and Shiites not only fuels the militias and death squads in Iraq, it drives the competition for supremacy across the Middle East between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. That’s more than two key Republicans on the Intelligence Committee knew when I interviewed them last summer.

More importantly, it's also a hell of a lot more than the Great Leader knew two months before he invaded Iraq.

But whatever. At least he's not Alcee Hastings. Heh!

Nothing to see here, folks. Move on.

After much fanfare, Putz really hasn't done much with the Symputzium. Maybe he was discouraged by this.

Oh well. We'll be ready when he decides to start solving Iraq again.

In the meantime, take a look at this.

The sound of silence.

A US Senator totally loses it on the Senate floor, saying Iraq is "absurd" and "may be criminal", that he can't support it anymore and that we should "cut and run." His actual words.

Yet not a peep about it a Putz's, who devoted half-a-dozen posts over several days to John Kerry's botched joke about Bush. There's also crickets chirping at Michelle Malkin's, Free Republic and Pajamas Media.

Where's the outrage? Where's the demand for an apology? Where's the accusations of endangering and demoralizing the troops?

Oh. He's a Republican.

More Hanson.

Shorter Hanson: Winning the war in Iraq is proving harder than winning World War II because we couldn't carpet bomb it, but we haven't made any critical mistakes, so if we start killing more insurgents, we'll win.

Friday Classic Putz.

Happy Friday.

Today, we look back on Putz's penetrating legal analysis of the First Amendment of the US Constitution which dates from 5/18/2004.

Freedom of the press, as it exists today (and didn't exist, really, until the 1960s) is unlikely to survive if a majority -- or even a large and angry minority -- of Americans comes to conclude that the press is untrustworthy and unpatriotic. How far are we from that point?

This concludes this segment of Classic Putz.

Pajamas Putziness

Shorter Michael Ledeen: The Iraq Study Group report is disgusting because it shows the terrorists that America is weak and will therefore cause more terror attacks.

The American people are spoiled, cowardly defeatists.

Andrew Sullivan, among other bloggers, have noted the growing meme on the right, that the Great Leader's Iraq failure is all the electorate's fault.

Cue Putz.

COMMENTS ON THE ISG REPORT, from Sgt. T.F. Boggs, back from his second deployment in Iraq. Excerpt: "I thought old people were supposed to be more patient than a 24 year old but apparently I have more patience for our victory to unfold in Iraq than 99.9 percent of Americans. Iraq isn’t fast food--you can’t have what you want and have it now."

A war that's lasted longer than World War II = "fast food."

These are tremendously ridiculous people.

Pajamas Media War on Christmas.

Taking the "Christ" out of "Christmas." From their current home page:

ONLY [Insert Number] DAYS UNTIL XMAS!
THE PAJAMAS MEDIA HOLIDAY SHOPPER.
Holiday toy confusion? Shop with Michelle and Pajamas!

I hope O'Reilly or Hannity boycotts these secularists gone wild.

How could you, Michelle Malkin?

Putz's Iraq Symposium reviewed.

The early reviews of the Symputzium are not promising.

Andrew Sullivan calls it "unhinged."
Kevin Drum says it's "batshit insane." (h/t Tristram Shandy)
Balloon Juice says Putz "f***ing killed parody."

And it's only just begun. As we noted, this is going to be fun.

Cutting and running in 2.67 Friedmans.

That appears what the Baker Iraq Study Group is recommending, if this report (hat tip, Sully) is accurate.

The long-awaited report by a commission headed by former Secretary of State James Baker gives a bleak assessment of the trajectory in Iraq and suggests that most U.S. combat troops should be withdrawn in the next 16 months, according to excerpts provided to TIME. Baker presented the report to President Bush this morning. "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating," the report's executive summary says. "There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved."

I'm sure Putz's symposium will help a lot.

Robert Gates vs. Putz.

Based on his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, Robert Gates and Putz don't seem to agree on too much.

Gates: "There clearly were insufficient troops in Iraq after the initial invasion to establish control over the country."

Putz: "But there was rioting in France, too! Heh!"

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.): "Mr. Gates, do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq?"

Gates: "No, sir."

Putz: "Hmm. He's clearly not paying attention."

Gates: "It's my impression that, frankly, there are no new ideas on Iraq."

Putz: "I'm going to try a blog symposium on Iraq, Iran, and Syria. I want some new ideas -- beyond "cut and run" or "stay the course" -- on things we're not doing that we should be doing."

Gates is definitely unserious and possibly troops-undermining and/or terrorist-emboldening.

Pajamas Media Putziness.

Shorter Victor Davis Hanson: We haven't "lost" in Iraq if you compare it to the casualties the Union suffered at Cold Harbor, but we will soon if we don't have a Sherman or a Patton around.

Putz's symposium begins.

I don't know about you, but I for one am really excited about Putz's Iraq Symposium. I mean, with a record like this, how can it fail?

Kidding aside, what will be fascinating about this is Putz has to crack open, even a little, a small window into the minds of his wingtoid readership. It's pretty obvious why Putz doesn't allow comments. When right wing bloggers do, this happens.

But even if Putz probably won't let us see ugly outbursts of the "hang Janet Reno" kind, we'll still get plenty of good stuff, like this:

The key is a regional solution. We cannot wall off Iraq from the nations around it, nor should we wish to. Instead, we should be exporting Iraq to the rest of the region.

Bottom line: "Regime change. More of it."

This is going to be fun.

Atrios love.

Welcome, shrill, unserious Atrios readers!

Insert "blind squirrel" or "stopped clock" joke here.

The Pajamas Media "breaking news" is John Bolton's resignation.

“If the White House thinks throwing in the towel and throwing Bolton overboard will appease the Dems or the U.N., it doesn’t know what reality is.” (Michelle Malkin)

Leaving aside the fact Bolton was blocked in committee by Republicans, not Democrats, Putz's gal Michelle really hits the nail on the head.

Putz on Iraq: a timeline.

Since Putz has so generously offered to hold a symposium on what to do about the Great Victory in Iraq disaster, we thought this brief timeline would be useful for the participants.

9/11/01
Suggests attacks on WTC give Bush license to nuke Baghdad.

6/4/02
Suggests that Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence before 9/11 (and again on 8/4/02).

6/22/02
Promotes connection between Iraq and the Oklahoma City bombing.

8/13/02
Argues that invading Iraq is important for "psychological reasons", i.e., to humiliate the Arab world.

8/29/02
Pooh-poohs worries about Iraq as a Vietnam-style trap.

9/4/02
Promotes theory that Osama bin Laden is a puppet of Saddam Hussein.

9/6/02
Promotes Iraq-al Qaeda connection. Also once again promotes operational connection between Timothy McVeigh and Iraq.

9/14/02
Compares Scott Ritter, who was speaking out against a preemptive US invasion of Iraq, to surrenderist defenders of the Soviet Union and Pol Pot.

9/16/02
Suggests Saddam will have a nuclear weapon in three months.

9/28/02
Hypes Saddam's nuclear threat again.

3/26/03
Begins series of "they're not antiwar--they're just on the other side" posts.

6/1/03
Argues that things look "pretty good" in Iraq despite the press's "bogus looting stories" that were attempts to "hurt Bush."

7/11/03
Promotes connection between Saddam and Osama.

11/12/03
Insists that attacks in Iraq are akin to the Battle of the Bulge and not an indication things are going "badly." Claims that "anti-war types" want "America to lose" and "dance on our soldiers' graves" but doesn't name any.

4/6/04
Accuses Ted Kennedy of emboldening our enemies by comparing Iraq to Vietnam.

4/20/04
Accuses Michael Moore of giving "aid and comfort" to the terrorists.

7/19/04
Again promotes Saddam-al Qaeda connection.

3/23/05
Triumphantly announces that we're winning in Iraq and that the press is wrong. Predicts that it's only a matter of time before Ted Kennedy will be taking the credit for it. Also, brags that blogs like Instapundit helped "neutralize the psychological warfare" of the terrorists.

11/11/05
Accuses Democratic critics of the Iraq war of being unpatriotic and hurting our troops abroad.

12/18/05
Says Bush believes we're winning in Iraq and that he thinks it will be obvious by November 2006.

1/14/06
Calls John Murtha, who began publicly criticizing the war, a disgrace.

1/26/06
Announces that we're winning in Iraq again.

4/18/06
Calls generals who publcily criticized Rumsfeld "gutless."

5/9/2006
Says we're winning again, which you'd know if you were "paying attention."

6/8/06
On the death of Zarqawi, accuses the press of emboldening the terrorists.

6/26/06
Breathlessly promotes Rick Santorum's "discovery" of WMD in Iraq.

8/22/06
Compares Iraq to Iwo Jima.

8/26/06
Compares the violence in Iraq to the violence in Philadelphia. Says the war "isn't terribly bloody."

9/1/06
Promotes bogus data indicating that violence is down in Iraq. Has to post a correction shortly after.

9/17/06
Wonders why Bush doesn't invade Iran, since Iran is the cause of "much of the problem" in Iraq.

10/23/06
Calls Americans who are worried about Iraq "cranky."

12/03/06
Offers to run symposium about what to do about Iraq.

Putz still thinks he has credibility on Iraq.

Imagine a "war blogger" who, for the past three years, has insisted time and time again that we were "winning" in Iraq, while dismissing those who saw the obvious signs that we weren't as defeatists and unserious, even going so far as to call one war critic, a 37-year veteran of the Marine Corps, a "disgrace."

Imagine that same person expressing befuddlement over the criticism of Donald Rumsfeld all the while Iraq was going up in flames, going so far to ridicule and condemn those who did so.

Imagine that same person excidedly report that WMD had been found in Iraq, if only the Bush-hating, terror-emboldening press would report it.

Imagine the same blogger wondering why we weren't invading Iran, given the obvious success of Iraq.

Now that same "war blogger" offers oh-so-authoritatively to conduct a symposium on Iraq. Where do I sign up?

IF THE LEAKS ARE TO BE BELIEVED -- and given such a group of experienced leakmeisters, I suspect they are -- then the Iraq Study Group's recommendations are likely to be weak tea indeed: Basically, we shall continue to muddle through, while rededicating ourselves to finishing the job at a time, and in a manner, not clearly specified.

Well, muddling through is underrated as a tactic, actually, and it's no surprise that a bunch of old-time Establishment guys haven't come up with anything revolutionary. In fact, it seems as if Donald Rumsfeld, judging by his classified memo thoughtfully leaked to the New York Times, remains more open to new ideas than many of his critics, who often seem stuck in 1968.

So can the blogosphere do better? I'm going to try a blog symposium on Iraq, Iran, and Syria. I want some new ideas -- beyond "cut and run" or "stay the course" -- on things we're not doing that we should be doing.

There are people who've been suggesting something beyond "cut and run" or "stay the course" (both Republican slogans) for months: they're called Democrats, you know, the people Putz calls seditious and unserious. Google Kerry, Murtha, Clark or Biden and you'll find plenty of alternatives to those two vapid Rovian marketing phrases.

Two points here. One, there is no solution to Iraq. Two, if there was one, it sure as shit wouldn't come from Putz.

Putz's boss.

Shorter Roger Simon: It's really cold this month, so Al Gore obviously made that whole "global warming" thing up.

Chuck Hagel: Democrat.

Putz, who ridiculed the eight generals who called for Rumsfeld to step down, was against listening to the generals before he was for it.

GENERAL JOHN ABIZAID, in The Harvard Gazette:

America cannot walk away from Iraq without risking another world war. That warning was sounded at the Kennedy School forum Nov. 17 by Gen. John Abizaid, commander of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), the man responsible for U.S. military strategy in the Middle East.

"We can walk away from this enemy, but they will not walk away from us," Abizaid told the forum audience during a discussion titled "The Long War."

...

Read the whole thing -- and remember that the big rap against Rumsfeld was supposedly that he "didn't listen to the generals." So will the Democrats, and Rumsfeld's successors, listen to this?

Chuck Hagel, last week:

A leading Republican senator called Sunday for American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq, declaring that a U.S. pullout is needed to head off "impending disaster" in the nearly 4-year-old war.

"There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq," Sen. Chuck Hagel wrote in Sunday's edition of The Washington Post.

Instead, he said, President Bush should use the upcoming report from a bipartisan panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker to begin laying the groundwork for a "phased withdrawal" of U.S. troops.

Back by popular demand: Classic Putz.

A reader recently suggested we revive an old Instaputz tradition, so every Friday, we'll be taking a look at a classic piece of putziness.

Our Classic Putz today is from December 14, 2003, and is about the US's capture of Saddam.

Josh Chafetz predicts: "Guerilla attacks will intensify for about a month before they start melting away." That's probably right.

This concludes our Classic Putz segment.