Whiskeyfire notes that Klein is now admitting he was “stupid” to support the invasion and occupation, and gets mean enough to say that “willful blindness” probably played a greater role. To me, this hardly goes far enough.

Let’s role-play. Imagine one day, a bomb falls on your house. Half your family is killed, including all your children and your grandmother. The people who bombed you were complete strangers with whom you’d had no interaction or relation, and they did so for political purposes that had nothing to do with you. If a few years later, Joe walked up to you and said, “gosh, I was stupid to support bombing you!” you would likely punch him in the face, or worse.

It seems as if most Villagers have no imagination nor compassion. They are truly inhumane, and times like this I’m reminded of that. The list of the true reasons for the invasion and the wide support for it at the time is a long one: greed, racism, bloodlust, insecurity, lack of vision, ignorance, arrogance, local/domestic political posturing, greed…

“Stupid” is too kind. It’s disengenuous, it undervalues the true degree of the sin and crime. It’s like a frat boy turning up his hands when the arresting officer comes by to pick him up on the charge of rape, saying, “Sorry, I was drunk” and expecting to get away with it. It’s the ’liberal’ element of the Unity meme. Republicans will always deny they made a mistake and blame someone else, but ’liberals’ like Klein will have the ’good grace’ to admit to some wrongdoing. Minor, of course. Just enough to make them seem different than their Republican co-cronies and apologists and criminals. “Stupid” is like “silly” and “sorry.” It’s unlike “bloodstained” and “warmongering” and “war criminal.”

That’s what Klein really is. And millions are dead, homeless, shredded in mind and body, because of people like him. I don’t forget that. Fuck him. And his “stupidity.”

Unlike Time, the Chicago Tribune rapidly corrected Joe Klein’s falsehoods about FISA.

Kudos to real journalists.  Read more 

Or is it Mickey Kaus who’s the goat-fucker? I forget. So many goat-fuckers to keep track of in the Village these days.

Sorry for the quote-less quick hit, but it’s a busy day. Just go read.  Read more 

From the mighty Avedon Carol (in comments), a dead-eyed dissection of Joe Klein’s bashing of his fellow (ha, ha, ha) liberals:  Read more 

Too bad there aren’t a lot of nuns in Iraq. I hear the rapin’ is much more fun when the victims have habits.

A reader writes:

Hey, Joe. How about addressing indications that the Bush Administration has employed the “Salvador” strategy to train death squads to take out militia leaders?

Joe answers:

I certainly hope so. If ever there was an appropriate circumstance for covert action—in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere—it is the effort to find and eliminate terrorists. They really are the enemy, you know.

I’m sure TIME will find someone to avocate for a return of slavery and the abolition of women’s sufferage soon.