Promoting honesty?

We promote democracy by leaving, which is what the solid majority of Iraqis want.

That's democracy, George.

Gosh, you'd almost think that Mr. Arabist himself, James Baker was in charge or something.

Apparently the realists are realists. They know in their guts that you can't impose Democracy at the point of a gun.

That said, we really should be doing things to promote Democracy in those middle eastern countries that are probably ready for more citizen participation.

The elites in those countries tend to be some of our stanchest allies as well some the most repressive regimes in the region. I don't see James Baker pushing democratic reform in Saudi Arabia, Yeman, or Egypt. Do you?

And did you see that it calls for privatisation of the oil industry? Baker and big oil decided that Sadam was "getting too big for his britches" because by manipulating the supply of oil he had immense power of determining price. They decided to help the White House group who wanted to have a war with Iraq. So we went to "war". Brennan demanded that the constitution include a provision that the oil industry be privatised and that oil companies could never be sued for anything ever. So under that guise of "helping" the country the oil industry will take away Iraq's major source of income. Nothing changes.

I guess we see the priorities...

Bug out and to Hell with America's ideals.

Doesn't look like we're in the position to inflict 'democracy' on anybody new, does it?

All throughout the past four years, the Bushies have basically wielded democracy as a threat, not a promise: 'if you don't do what we tell you to, we might just bring democracy to your country!' Won't work now. Three and a half years ago, we were saber-rattling at the Syrians and Iranians; now, if we chose to come begging to them to help us stabilize Iraq, we'd be out of both carrots and sticks.

Kevin,

If you have any sort of banning mechanism on this blog, now is the time to use it.

With extreme prejudice.

Kevin, in case you haven't noticed, someone is trying to destroy your comment feature -- not just a single discussion thread, but the entire comment feature -- with Spam attacks. Do you care? Does the management of the Washington Monthly website care? If a hacker attacked their server with a denial of service attack and made it completely inaccessible, would they care? If they don't care, then why do they bother having a website?

the ISG report doesn't say a single word about promoting democracy either in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East?

I'm sure the conservatives at The Weekly Standard and the neo-cons over at TNR are crestfallen. Unless they were only jiving us with that talk, and just thought a LOT of Muslims needed to die.

Trying to hide some pertinent knowledge, rmck1?

Kevin,

It doesn't mention democracy because 8 million, then 10 million, then 12 million Iraqis have already voted in the last three elections. I know how desperately you want to reprise your youth and see America humiliated, but we still might be in a situation closer to South Korea 1955 than South Viet Nam 1975. Just once I'd like you to say you don't hate America as much as the William Arkin's of the world, but then you go and quote him approvingly. If we had a Reagan or a McCain as president, your ankle biting wouldn't be so serious, but I'm afraid you might hamstring this loser. Then we'll have to wait till the next 911 to finish what we should do today.

Bob,

Please stop.

I know a good isp who would ba happy to post a blog of your own for a small fee. You could hold forth endlessly. I am sure millions would descend on your blog to read your endless disconnected comments, and insert comments of their own.

I think that is the first time I've ever agreed with SecAn. Well said.

I'm kinda confused by ZionBot. Is this blogspam supposed to make me sympathetic to the cause? It's kinda having the reverse effect....

Is this blogspam supposed to make me sympathetic to the cause?

This blogspam is supposed to make the comment threads unreadable, and frustrate discussion.

It's working, too.

For those not paying attention, the asshole spammer trying to destroy the comments is not Bob; it is the Charlie aka Cheney aka Thomas aka Jeffery aka Spock aka nina troll.

Looks like the Washington Monthly will finally have to make a choice -- fix the comments section or remove it. Against a determined spammer or troll, an unsupervised forum will always fail.

What did the report say about rescinding the tax cuts to see if the rich really want this war in this way?

Looks like the Washington Monthly will finally have to make a choice -- fix the comments section or remove it. Against a determined spammer or troll, an unsupervised forum will always fail.

Depends what you mean by unsupervised: registration plus viewer-controlled filters may suffice without active moderation.

But no controls available at any point clearly doesn't work.

Can we please get one of those Jews who want to control what you have to scroll past to kickban this bastard please?

Another concept the report pointedly doesn't mention:

Victory.

Nobody posts any more comments until Kevin puts in some check against spam garbage.

Just as an aside, can you imagine what a pathetic figure Charlie must be to spam the threads all day long with crap and handle spoof?

Talk about having no life and nothing to look forward to.

That's his signature Matrix posting above, by the way. Makes him feel mysterious and powerful, when sadly, he's tragic and powerless.

He used to post stuff from Star Wars but then he grew up. Or something.

This used to be one of my favorite websites. I will not be back for a few months, unless Kevin fixes these problems.

Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ!

If I confess that I singlehandedly crucified your Lord and desire world domination for access to all currency evrywhere, will this spammer asshole knock it the hell off?

Between the undermoderation of the site administrators and the overmoderation of some of our posters, this blog ain't worth a bucket of warm spit now.

If I confess that I singlehandedly crucified your Lord and desire world domination for access to all currency evrywhere, will this spammer asshole knock it the hell off?

Of course he won't. You still haven't copped to your stranglehold on the entertainment industry, habit of drinking the blood of Christian babies, and general cheapassity.

That's his signature Matrix posting above, by the way. Makes him feel mysterious and powerful, when sadly, he's tragic and powerless.

If I had to guess, I'd say its a new troll deliberately playing off Charlie, the usual batch of Jewish-conspiracy trolls, and rmck1 and his open campaign to get Kevin to adopt a decent commenting system.

OTOH, I don't really care who it is, they are trying to ruin the comment section—and succeeding.

Poor George and the neocons....dashed dreams of democracy and discredited logic that the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad.

Kevin,
There are some lines that shouldn't be crossed. Wall-o-Texts should be one of them.

how is the insane commentor managing to post so quickly? I'll miss you Global Citizen, Shortstop and CMDicely (and many others), but my finger can't take much more hitting "page down" to get past that crud.

rmck1, you should know some fool is posting the same thing over and over under your name.

anandine,

there is nothing he can do about it.

If anyone still cares, it looks like that fool is now on the more recent post from Mr. Drum.

looks like I was wrong...

You still haven't copped to your stranglehold on the entertainment industry

Globe has a stranglehold on the entertainment industry?

Globe, do you think you could get me a job in Hollywood?

Or at least some cheap concert tickets?

This is what any reasonable person would call a blog heist...a theft of enormous proportions. Seems if you feel the need to document so selfishly, taking up copious amounts of space... start your own blog.
Are you seeking to prove you are the biggest, baddest alpha male in the room? Does rmck1 mean .real.mother.cramming.kevin.1 time too many? Attention-seeking, manipulative and generally reflective of borderline personality disorder, as they say in the business.

Maybe just a Playstation 3?

Not only are they trying to wreck the blog, they're apparently trying to wreck me with it.

Thanks for not buying into it, folks. The few who do are doubtless part of the campaign.

cmdicely:

I'd never in a bazillion years approve of a blog attack to make a point about moderation, Jesus Christ. I made my views clear early up the thread in the post about spam that I absolutely do not support any form of counter-blogging whatsoever.

And in the past I hadn't been all that strongly in favor of moderation, either.

But now, obviously, something needs to be done.

Bob

Thanks for the cleanup, Kevin.

I'd never in a bazillion years approve of a blog attack to make a point about moderation

Nor did I suggest you would, I suggested that I thought the insane blog-wrecker was a new poster using your name to imply, in a hamfisted way, that it was a new tactic in your (historically, restrained and reasonable) campaign to get Kevin to engage in some moderation, while at the same time adopting elements from the repertoire of several other reviled blog-wreckers here.

Why should it? The Iraq War architects never gave a shit about democracy beyond using it as a means to an end. If you go back to the Project for a New American Century's "Statement of Principles," you will only find one offhand reference to the promotion of democracy:

"we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values"

In other words, "a democratic country is only worth supporting if it furthers our interests."

"Democracy promotion" in the Middle East was always a cover to give naked agression some false sense of "moral clarity." Now that the jig is up, any attempt for the United States to actually promote democracy is basically lost for the next decade or so. All such attempts, no matter how sincere, will understandably be met with instant suspicion. At least the ISG was smart enough not to get on a high horse at a time like this.

Thank you, Kevin, for cleaning things up.

It was obviously not rmck1 wreaking that havoc.

Is there some way for volunteers to police the blog for spam?

Sorry that I was incorrect, rmck1. I apologize.

Not only are they trying to wreck the blog, they're apparently trying to wreck me with it.

You baby! No one thinks you're actually "spamming" the blog, you idiot!

Hello, this has been going on for over four days and my name has been dragged through the mud ten times worse than yours has--and you think this is a systematic attempt to "wreck" you?

Where was your outrage when it was being done to me, you limpwristed little pantywaist?

Pathetic.

ahem.

Careful, ecdn, Bob will think you're trying to wreck his good name...

Pale:

Not true; several folks at the top of the thread seemed to have gotten that idea. That's why I responded to it directly. They apologized, and of course it's all cool.

Of course others are getting whacked -- Gregory and trex in earlier threads. And many regulars are being spoofed, regardless of the spam.

I was only referring to the spam attacks. But yes -- the entire blog seems to be under some kind of systematic assault.

So if means anything at all to you -- I owe you an apology.

Bob

"They apologized, and of course it's all cool." Stop inventing imaginary apologies to go with your imaginary friends, you nitwit. You have no idea, just no idea. Nobody here respects you for that very reason. Cluetrain choochoo leave without Bob.

Apology accepted, you limpwristed little pantywaist.

Other missing or lightly mentioned terms:

Wolfowitz - 0 mentions
Neo-conservative - 0
Donald Rumsfeld - 1
Condoleeza Rice - 1
Victory - 3
Republican - 4 (only as identifiers)
Failure - 8

And to take up pj's point, "Victory" is only mentioned in the context of a likely al Qaeda victory unless we change strategies in Iraq, changing strategies presumably meaning following the suite of recommendations in their report.