Brother Ledeen takes on Hersh, Marshall and Jay Rockefeller — among other assorted prevaricators — in the best explication so far of the Senate Intell Committee Report. [Make the full disclosure. He's your friend.-ed. They know that already.]
Then Rockefeller went on to lament that the report didn’t really explain “the environment of intense pressure in which the intelligence officials were asked to render judgments,” implying that administration officials bullied the analysts into saying what the president wanted to hear. Not so. The report explained that there was certainly pressure, but that pressure came from the real situation – from the knowledge that error might lead to the death of many Americans – not from policymakers demanding that intelligence officials get the analysis just right.
In fact, for those few people who actually read the report, there’s a pretty big story around page 357, on which we learn that Chairman Roberts got upset at the many anonymous leaks alleging pressure to “cook” the intelligence in the run-up to the war. So he, along with his House counterpart, Porter Goss, “made a public call for officials to come forward and contact the Committee if they had information” about such pressure. Roberts issued that call at least nine different times, but “the Committee was not presented with any evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political pressure…or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to do so…”
So Rockefeller should either put up or shut up. If the report is wrong, he put his signature on a lie. If it’s right, he should stop talking as if he lived in an alternate sauna…I mean universe.
Read it all, of course. It should be noted that Ledeen was rumored to be the author of the (now irrelevant) Niger forgery. As a friend of Michael’s I can promise you one thing, if he were, he would have done a better job. (And if Josh Marshall were a decent man, he would get out of the blogosphere dog house, admit he was wrong on that sleazebag Wilson and apologize for sliming the Ledeen family a la Krugman. Simone Ledeen was in the line of fire, Josh. How about you?)
Don’t bet on Marshall owning up. I’m amazed at his inability to ever, once, acknowledge his mistakes. I do suspect that the story he is supposedly “working on” (and I use scare quotes because, as Ace-Of-Spades has often pointed out, Marshall says stuff like that ALL THE TIME and then just quietly slinks away from the issue w/o further comment) will try to finger Ledeen or some other prominent neoconservative mind on the forgeries. For some reason (and it can’t just be the Butler report) I keep hearing July 14th tossed around as a significant date to watch for.
I’m in full agreement with Mr. Ledeen’s WMD conjecture. Heck, even Ramzi Youseff used WMD as part of the ’93 World Trade Center attack (cyanide, if memory serves).
The use of unmarked gas shells look to me like solid evidence of a deniable, secure means of storing WMD munitions. There’d be a lot fewer problems moving trailers full of shells across a border if every shell looked the same. Not to mention giving weapons inspectors fits searching for WMD in depots the size of many US cities.
From David Kay’s October 2, 2003 statement during a joint congressional hearing:
Let me turn now to chemical weapons (CW). In searching for retained stocks of chemical munitions, ISG has had to contend with the almost unbelievable scale of Iraq’s conventional weapons armory, which dwarfs by orders of magnitude the physical size of any conceivable stock of chemical weapons. For example, there are approximately 130 known Iraqi Ammunition Storage Points (ASP), many of which exceed 50 square miles in size and hold an estimated 600,000 tons of artillery shells, rockets, aviation bombs and other ordinance. Of these 130 ASPs, approximately 120 still remain unexamined. As Iraqi practice was not to mark much of their chemical ordinance and to store it at the same ASPs that held conventional rounds, the size of the required search effort is enormous.
That’s right. David Kay stated that there were an estimated 600,000 TONS of artillery shells in Saddam’s munition bunkers.
Make that:
“600,000 tons of artillery shells, rockets, aviation bombs and other ordinance”
Josh Marshall apologize?
Howls…Howls of derisive laughter, Roger.
Josh Marshall and Joe Wilson are soulmates in all respects. Marshall’s defense has far less to do with the facts of the matter as it does the reflexive need to defend one’s self. Joe Wilson decided that disseminating his particular fraud was a good career move. And that, sure as shit, is something Josh Marshall can understand and empathize with.
It was all about the money, and this is exactly what resonates with ol’ Josh. Josh isn’t a pundit, nor is he a public intellectual, nor is an academic…he’s a partisan spinmeister. That’s his job and his career. People don’t read Josh Marshall for either fact or for analysis; they read him to get the latest line on how breaking events can be twisted to conform to their own prejudices.
Josh Marshall will never apologize to either Ledeen, primarily because it would never occur to him to do so. Marshall’s job isn’t to accurately report facts or to offer original analysis, it is to whore it up for the crowd he is catering to. He will defend Joseph Wilson as long as his audience demands it of him. Were they to call for a public hanging of Wilson tomorrow, he would supply both the rope and a 500 word column to justify it all. This isn’t about Niger or yellowcake or Valerie or personal intellectual honesty, its about money and career.
As little respect I have for the so-called profession of ‘journalism’, you do that profession a grave disservice by implying Josh Marshall belongs to the fraternity and should at least make gestures towards complying with its supposed ‘ethical norms’ (I can’t type those two words in the context of ‘journalism’ without gagging).
Josh Marshall is a journalist in the same sense that Dick Morris is a journalist.
Well said, Dennis.
And accusing Josh of Chickendovery (as opposed to Chickenhawkery) is probably not going to arouse a sense of shame in the boy.
Being an armchair Robert Fisk is not a task taken on by those easily shamed.
I’m not much into snark but the notion that the folks at CIA are so delicate that they couldn’t stand up to Cheney’s mindrays is just plain nuts. Rockefeller knows better than this. If he’s claiming that CIA is full of self-important and self-serving bureaucrats who can’t be relied to give the straight skinny if a pleasant lie will serve their careers better, I ask you, do we need that kind of intelligence agency at all. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about open source intelligence more seriously.
As I believe I pointed out when Cheney’s three-word reply to Leahy was a Big Deal, sometimes that’s the most polite reply possible.
This is another lovely example.
I want to distance myself from the harsh words about Josh Marshall by DennisThePeasant. Not because I haven’t occasionally felt that way myself when insulted by one or another of his rhetorical evasions, but rather because such fire-breathing isn’t helpful. If Marshall isn’t a pundit, then neither are any number of folks who reliably spin Left or Right; these types of characters exist on both sides and I think it’s pointlessly rude (and contributes much Heat and no Light to the discussion) to use those terms.
That said (and I want to make clear that Dennis is writing what I have felt at my most intemperate, so I can sympathize), there is clearly something wrong with Marshall, and he hasn’t always been this way. Sure, he’s always been a partisan Democrat, but he didn’t use to engage in this sort of brazen bizarro-world “no facts save those which I acknowledge or create” punditry. I think things changed around the time he got his PhD, simply because that signalled his abandonment of the academic mindset in favor of a full-time entry into Washington Democratic politics. The Bush people have their own set of loyalty-test hoops, to be sure, but the situation is exactly the same in Washington Democratic circles, and Marshall’s career seems to be following the typical “yield integrity/gain access” pattern that I see all the time among new faces in this city. It’s unsurprising, but it is depressing, since I know he’s smarter than that.
This is all rank speculation, of course (and deserves to be treated as such), but I feel compelled to explain why he has morphed into an extremely unpleasant character over the past two years. I used to really enjoy reading the guy, even if I disagreed with him. Now I find him unctuous and immensely self-serving. I hate having to use those words, but not as much as I hate having to admit that he is, more and more, turning into his reputed protege: Sidney Blumenthal.
What really gets me is that Wilson lied and even those who may have known he lied couldn’t speak out because info was classified. A window into the black box of government that we shouldn’t forget.
When I first heard about this I trotted over to Josh’s site ’cause I wanted to read his spin. I was appalled, though not surprised. His writing made him seem such a little man. A little weezened smelly man huddled with a keyboard in a very dark corner.
Jeff B.,
Mr. Marshall is what he is. His potential is of negligible interest. Krugman was a man of some repute at one time, too. That Mr. Marshall is a protege of Blumenthal is totally unsurprising. Mr. Marshall’s current schtick appears to be glaring mendacity for what he considers to be a worthy cause. In some dim future his party may hold power again and he may be rewarded with some nice table scraps. One might hope that whatever scraps he receives seem to him to be worthy of his sale of his reputation. That is, if one could summon the interest to give a damn at all about him.
As for myself, Nov. 2nd will provide the appropriate risposte for Mssrs. Marshall, Krugman and Blumenthal. The dogs in the outer hall never even see table scraps.
Dennis,
I forgot – very nice post.
Who’s Josh Marshall?
Josh Marshal is a partisan, an intelligent partisan but one nonetheless and don’t expect any apologies from him.
Like I said I emailed him when his buddy (whom he still recommends at his site) “”Professor”" Juan Cole, notable Arabists and virulent anti-American and Israeli, did anything possible jumping over hoops to try and get Israel’s name mentioned alongside Abu Ghraib right after it happened.
I emailed Marshal several times and he still wouldn’t say a harsh word about it.
If you really want to see how biased and un-profeesional Cole is in his un-challenged position at yet another institution that only employs Arabists and leftists with no balance you can read Bernard Lewis’s latest book “Dragonmen”
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195173368/qid=1089655615/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/104-2589444-9495951
or read Tony Badran’s (Lebanese) intellectual weblog.
http://www.beirut2bayside.blogspot.com
Mike
Jeff B.-
I’ll grant you that neither temperate language nor nuanced judgement constitute personal strengths of mine, so to that extent criticism could be said to be in order at times. Perhaps this is one of those times.
But then again, maybe not.
The actual language I used is very much in the vein typically used by my Little Leftist Friends to describe people like Rush Limbaugh. Understand that I don’t listen to Limbaugh much at all, and I certainly do not consider him a pundit (he would have to stop getting his talking points for the RNC and the WSJ to make that leap). But at the same time to don’t consider him to be the vile, partisan hate-monger that people like Tom Daschle portray him as. The language I used to discuss Marshall was very purposeful in that respect. If you don’t feel comfortable hanging it on Marshall, you can probably imagine there are people out there equally uncomfortable with it being hung on Limbaugh.
The primary difference between Limbaugh and Marshall outside of their political orientations is twofold. First, Limbaugh is far more forthright about his outlook and his motivations. Second, and to his credit, when Limbaugh was ungentlemanly enough to insult Chelsea Clinton on his TV show, he immediately went on his radio show and issued a very forthright apology to Ms. Clinton and her parents. So, if Rush Limbaugh does qualify as a dishonest hate-monger to some, it should be noted that he has, at this point, demonstrated a degree of personal integrity we have yet to see from the far more upright, enlightened and moral Josh Marshall.
Finally, I would only note that if you are trying to distance yourself from what I wrote, you didn’t get very far. I have re-read your post three times and have yet to find any disagreement between us in terms of substance.
Apologies if this has been previously pointed out.
For the convenienc of Roger’s Readers, The Senate Intelligence website is at:
http://intelligence.senate.gov/
The full report (at least I believe this is the one under discussion) is at:
http://intelligence.senate.gov/iraqreport2.pdf
A 30 page “Conclusions” report can be found at:
http://intelligence.senate.gov/conclusions.pdf
Consider, for a moment, the Newsweek headline:
‘The Dots Never Existed’
A damning report on Iraq intelligence failures throws the administration a Curve Ball
Before one can even reach page 2 of the summary conclusions document, however, one finds:
“…The intelligence reporting did support the conclusions that chemical and biological weapons were within Iraq’s technical capability, that Iraq was trying to procure dual-use material that could have been used to produce these weapons, and that uncertainties existed about whether Iraq had fully destroyed its pre-Gulf War stocks of weapons and precursors. Iraq’s efforts to deceive and evade United Nation’s weapons inspectors and its inability or unwillingness to fully account for pre-Gulf War chemical and biological weapons and precursors could have led analysts to the reasonable conclusion that Iraq retained those materials, but analysts did not have enough information to state with certainty that Iraq “has” these weapons.”
Hmmm… no certainty, yet reasonable conclusions. The Senate Intelligence committe had access to virtually everything the administration had access to and they accepted, at the time, the reasonable conclusions as, under the circumstances, sufficient.
Yet Newsweek gives us this…
“…just one of many wince-inducing moments to be found in the 500-page Senate report, which lays out how the U.S. intelligence community utterly failed to accurately assess the state of Saddam Hussein’s programs for weapons of mass destructionóand how White House and Pentagon officials, intent on taking the country to war, unquestioningly embraced the flawed conclusions.”
Drawing reasonable conclusions is converted to “utterly failed”. And the fact that everyone with any responsibility (Administration, Senate Intelligence Committee, intelligence comunities of other governments, the UN which still insisted on inspections and compliance with resolutions, and so forth) to protect themselves or others from Saddam’s Iraq is converted into “…White House and Pentagon officials, intent on taking the country to war, unquestioningly embraced the flawed conclusions.”
How difficult does anyone suppose it would be to go through the Newsweek archives and find some of the “reasonable conclusions” they drew from their crack investigation and reporting of the world scene to find such conclusions presented as “certainty”? Does anyone suppose that would be materially different than the prevailing pre-war conclusions and “certainties”? Just askin’.
John Podhoretz, Austin Bay, and Mark Steyn each have (IMO) excellent articles dealing with aspects of our recent discussions here. Instapundit links to them all. I imagine you all, or those of you interested, know your way over to Instapundit.
I wonder how many anti-war types are giggling over that misleading Newsweek headline. It serves their purpose, truth be damned.
You should listen to the arrogance and self-flatulence of Wilson in this speech that Hobbs links to in the post of his Roger links to. In that post his 2nd link is to a September 2003 entry on Hobbs where he links to a speech by him.
The introducer of that speech was none other than Josh Marshal.
Hobbs current entry -
HOBBS ENTRY IN SEPTMEMBER of 2003
http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/000503.html
WILSON SPEECH -
http://next.epic-usa.org/epicdev2/_media/2003forumaudio/28-lecture-wilson-32.mp3
Dennis -
You’re right that there is probably little daylight between us in terms of our substantial positions (although I think your word choice errs too far in the way of simply delegitimizing an opponent via ad hominem). For the record, I dislike Limbaugh too, but strongly disagree with attempts to paint him as a mindless hatemonger, so I would express an equal level of dismay in that case as well.
The reason why I think such language isn’t helpful in these situations is because it merely gives someone like Marshall an excuse to ignore the criticsm and calls for reevaluation or intellectual honesty altogether (pace those who’d say “as if he needed one anyway”). Once you start name-calling, the other guy will usually just seize upon that and use it as a peremptory excuse to ignore everything else you have to say.
I guess this all comes from a vain hope of mine: that, if he was addressed politely and convincingly enough, Marshall would sit back, reconsider, and actually retract some of his more embarrassingly surreal assertions. I’m really a fool for thinking that – I’ve lived in Washington all my life and hence should know better – and I’m probably just wishfully projecting my own intellectual style upon others.
So maybe you’re right: forget him.
I’ve just scanned a few of the pages of the report in the biological weapons area. The report takes pains to point out how many possible legitimate pharmaceutical applications there are for things like chemical dryers and particulate mills.
Okay, I’ll bite. This country of 25 million people, which has let its main industry, oil, decay for 10 years, is now engaged in cutting edge science to help people survive botulin and tetanus? This same government that let thousands of children die because UN-provided vaccinations weren’t distributed is now, mirabile dictu, devoting its dwindling national resources to pharmaceutical research?
Call me skeptical.
Fresh Air,
I’m having a bit of the same problem with the section confirming Iraq’s continued development of it’s missile program. Increasing range for what purpose? Lobbing 200 kilos of explosives into Israel doesn’t make much sense, the retaliation just wouldn’t be worth it. If the WMD program was in the disarray portrayed by the report why did Iraq focus on the missile program? What was the proposed payload for these new missiles?
Knucklehead,
Thanks for the links. Everyone should read the summary and give it some thought. The HUMINT capabilities of the CIA were legislatively destroyed by the same jackasses that wrote this report and the Senators are not taking any responsibility for their idiotic previous decisions.
You’ve gotta give the Dems on the committee credit. Having signed on to the committee report, which states that there is no evidence of pressure having been placed on the CIA by the Bush Administration to come up with “the right” answers; they can now turn around and say: “But we all know – wink wink, nod nod – that there are all kinds of ways to pressure a government agency for ‘the right’ information.”
They can have it, and are having it, both ways.
This is definitely a damning report of our national intelligence-gathering agencies. But another thing this report does is put the lie to, well, Bush Lied! Take a look at the chemical weapons section, from the 2002 NIE (page 198 in the Senate report):
Saddam probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 500 metric tons of CW agents – much of it added in the last year. [emphasis added]
Okay, put yourself in W.’s shoes for a second. You have asked your intelligence staffers umpteen times if they are sure about Saddam having WMD. George Tenet says “slam dunk.” You have a report on your desk that says they are currently producing massive quantities of chemical weapons–enough to wipe out hundreds of thousands of people. What do you do?
(a) Call Jacques Chirac and ask for his opinion.
(b) Call Kofi Annan and ask for his opinion.
(c) Double check with Scott “Child Prison” Ritter.
(d) Tell Vlad no more visits to the ranch unless he leans on Saddam to quit making chemical weapons.
(e) Call Tony Blair and ask how many divisions he can spare.
Fresh Air,
Thanks for provoking a smile (OK, nearly a LOL). I get a similar feeling when I see claims that Iran is developing their nuclear program for peaceful purposes. What? Are the Iranians going to suddenly enter X-ray machine business? That’ll make a lot of lo-goal, hi-comp salesmen happy for a while.
Oh, energy! That peaceful purpose! Of course! Lemme see… pumping 15% or so of the world’s petroleum… a similar percentage of the world’s known oil reserves… Yeah, power generation, that must be it. The 8th century mullahs are determined to have 21st centruy electrical power generation. Are they putting up windmill farms and investing in solar energy also?
There does seem to be a problem with quite a few of the pundits on the Left; their unwillingness to acknowledge that they were wrong. L’affaire Wilson is just one example. Paul Krugman is so deluded that he continues to write that the double-dip recession is just around the corner.
The odd thing to me is that the Left used to just forget about things they had been proven wrong about. The internet has made that more difficult because the historical record can be looked up, so now they have adopted the “lalalalala, I can’t hear you” method of defense. Or, as in Marshall’s case, they cling to any small reed they can find.
Knuckle–
Smiles are free. Laughs are ten bucks.
The remarkable thing about the whole debate over WMD is that Saddam, Cher Saddam, has gotten all the benefits of the doubt and Bush has gotten none of them.
I saw Bush’s statements defending the invasion reported in the WaPo online today. They were forceful, but he he could have done more simply by quoting some of the relevant passages from the Senate report now in the public domain. I’m looking forward to seeing Mark Steyn’s finger firmly jammed into Ted Kennedy’s eye later this week.
Jeff B.-
The reason why I think such language isn’t helpful in these situations is because it merely gives someone like Marshall an excuse to ignore the criticsm and calls for reevaluation or intellectual honesty altogether (pace those who’d say “as if he needed one anyway”).
Aha! Now we get to the crux of the buscuit…
My perspective is somewhat different, in that I no longer bother to give any of the Anti-Liberation Liberal/Leftist crowd any benefit of the doubt when it comes to the sincerity of their position. It is increasingly clear to me that the Anti-Liberationistas have been, for a variety of reasons, utterly dishonest with us as to their positions and motivations. It is also increasingly clear that this dishonesty has been present since the beginning of the debate over whether the U.S. should liberate Iraq.
Josh Marshall doesn’t really differ too much from people like Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias. All have, at various times, staked out any number of inconsistent and contradictory positions based on the single overriding principle that under no circumstances can George W. Bush, his Administration, or the Republican Party be given credit for anything positive: That which does appear positive must either be (a) ignored, if possible, or (b) spun into a negative (and the spin need not be either accurate or fair…just negative). In doing so they have demonstrated a willingness to disregard the interests of the people of Iraq as well as the people of the U.S.. The only thing that matters is the reacquisition of power by the Democratic Party (and the conferring of a proportion of that power upon them).
Thus, there is no particular reason for me to engage in their respective fantasies of being responsible, knowledgeable political journalists. They make their livings satisfying the needs of their Liberal/Left tribe in the areas of building party solidarity and reinforcing the current political dogma. Under such conditions, expressions of fact of opinion that run counter to the goals of building and reinforcing solidarity cannot be tolerated…they run counter to the job description.
Beyond that, there is a level of personal and intellectual immaturity that runs through these people, and especially Josh Marshall, that precludes the need to entertain the idea that they are interested in or open to personal re-evaluation of their political positions. Read Marshall long enough (a week, say) and it becomes apparent that behind the Ph.D. and the articles and the appearances, there is little more than a completely reflexive expression of the Liberal/Left party line…often cleverly done, but reflexive nonetheless. Reflexive, unthinking affiliation with a political party is not a hallmark of either personal maturity or intellectual depth.
In my opinion, Josh Marshall would never consider apologizing to either Ledeen under any circumstance other than personal gain. His motivations for criticizing them were as patently dishonest as they could be in the first place. Given that, why am I obligated to give him the benefit of the doubt that somehow, if I can just be nice enough, that he will come forth and undo that dishonesty? The answer is, of course, that I am under no such obligation.
Josh Marshall has made the conscious decision to engage in pure partisan political hackery on a regular basis. I owe him no respect for that. As he seems to be rather bright, I can only assume that he has done so purely for the personal gain of career enhancement and ego gratification. That is being charitable, for the other option is simply to label him an amoral apparatchik willing to lie to get to where he desires to be.
Overall, I think I’ve gone light on him.
DtP…you’d make a good profiler.
That piece Marshall wrote linked to in Roger’s post is pure sleeze.
When I started my (yawn) exodus from the Democrats one of the first places I used to visit was TPM. That lasted a week. He really bothered me but I wasn’t sure why. I felt a kind of creepy attitude behind everything he wrote, picky and nasty it seemed to me.
But what did I know.
Probably good his was one of the first sites I visited. Totally turned me off.
Rick Ballard, thanks for bringing up a question that has a direct bearing on the murky question of Iraqi WMD intentions and programs: why the ambitious ballistic missile program unless WMD payloads were in prospect? The accuracy of any ballistic missile Iraq was likely to have, even at the upper end of its apparent program, would still be far too poor to justify the whole project without a fairly respectable WMD payload.
This was my principal reaction to the ISG interim report last fall. The level of effort, the cost (including apparently a $10M down-payment to No. Korea on which Iraq was stiffed), indicated at least a strong likelihood that Iraq either had or expected to have suitable payloads available.
One logical explanation for the missile program (apparently) being one of the more vigorous of the ongoing banned weapons efforts is that Iraq either had suitable payload (almost certainly chemical) already available, or had positioned itself to rapidly reconstitute such materials once it had the delivery system ready.
To me among the more fascinating and yet unsung tidbits are the robust ballistic missile effort that almost presupposed WMD availability, and the stocks of exposure suits and atropine sticks (nerve-gas antidote) found in Iraqi supply points.
Dave Schuler — Hell, Rockefeller went on the Sunday news shows and announced that he had felt “psychologically pressured” to vote for the Iraq war, and if an august solon of the Senate cannot resist Cheney’s mind-control powers, what chance did a bunch of mere GS-13 civil servants have?
IceCold,
Add the group of Syrian “technicians” who were blown up in that train “accident” in North Korea to the equation and things become curiouser and curiouser. We really do need a statement of public policy toward Iran, Syria and NK explaining the certain consequences of them continuing to try and develop nuclear weapons. Technically I believe that a state of conflict still exists between NK and the US. Perhaps a nice blockade embargoing all shipping subject to US inspection might be a good idea.
It seems that every two bit thug dictator in the world thinks that wearing a “we’ve got the bomb” talisman around his neck is a sure fire way to cling to power. An embargo of NK might be the best way to demonstrate the futility of that particular “charm”.
Maybe Michael Ledeen could assign Dan Darling the task of preparing an analysis of the possibility. Based on this Senate report I’d weigh Dan’s analysis as carefully as anything that Langley turned out. If Mr. Marshall could get someone to explain it to him (perhaps through interpretative dance) perhaps even he could understand the seriousness of the threat.
Not to jump on the “I no longer respect Josh Marshall” bandwagon but…
I have drawn the same conclusion many of you have. He used to be reasonable and was a great source for an articulate presentation of Demo/Left positions. Indeed, he was originally in favor of going into Iraq (before he decided to be against it…sound familiar?). Then it seems the Sid Bug got him (via Sy Hersh?).
My speculation is that he made a business decision to drive left traffic to his site by uncritically embracing the talking points of the
Demo/Left. Before the change I’m sure he got beaten-up by lefties nearly as much as the right and to what end? His current business has a loyal and fawning audience for which targeted ads can generate revenue.
But whatever the motives (I’m not close enough to him to do anything but guess) the change is clear and he has abandoned his intellectual integrity and ability to persuade or be taken seriously. He can snark with the best of them but to what end? These are serious times with serious issues and we need good minds, willing to wrestle with tough solutions; all he wants to do anymore is throw molotov tails and yell “viva la revolucion”.
“Baghdad Josh” Marshall…
Marshall is simply not interested in changing his mind, or apologizing, about anything. Politics are his faith. At his essence, and this is strictly my opinion, he is nothing more than a pinhead goalpost-moving lefty apologist.