Footnote to the preceding

The sad fact is, in the short term we are still oh so screwed. A couple of weeks ago, on November 2, the Los Angeles Times ran an article about the increasing challenges to the war and how formerly timid and intimidated Dummycrats are starting to find their voices.

But most of the big names in the Democratic foreign policy establishment - ranging from Sen. Joseph R. Biden of Delaware to retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark - still fear that this push for a fixed timetable for withdrawal would hurt the war effort in Iraq and the Democratic cause in the 2006 election.

"I think the only thing that can rescue Bush from the consequences of his inept handling of Iraq is overkill by zealous Democrats," said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank.

In other words, the party establishment, in its smug reticence, is trying to achieve exactly that of which the Mean Machine is accusing those who are speaking out: the obtaining of partisan political advantage. Their concern is not with Iraq or the people of Iraq or even the US forces there or their families and friends, not with the stain on our nation, on our honor as citizens and as human beings, not with the damage we've done, not with the terrorists created by our stupidity, our cruelty, our callousness, but only with what will play well next November.

Scum.