Another quote from your article:

"Returning to the Moon will be very different from what it was the first time around. But it is the only way to get the public interested in space again."

They lost interest in the Moon while we were going there last time. There is no basis to claim returning to the Moon is a way to reinvigorate interest in space. While it is certainly debatable if anything can, a new destination with obvious public interest is certainly more likely to than a return to the Moon. The quote and lack of coherant logic in it clearly reveals the blind pro-moon bias of the article. Note as well that the quotes are the author's who has never been associated with the space program as far as I know and appears to have not a clue about the aerospace basics Adam mentioned.

Adam dealt with the technical innacuracy of your DW quote quite well, but I'd like to add the following I was preparing prior to an ISP crash.

A key fact missing from your quote Is that it takes about the same energy and fuel to reach the Moon as it does Mars so going to the Moon first makes little sense. This is the key fact Moon
firsters keep ignoring. The reason Mars plans pre-Zubrin required so such bigger ships was not difficulty in getting to Mars, but carrying the fuel needed for return. Manufacture it on Mars and you need far smaller rockets.

A long term stay on the Moon would require facilities similar to those for a long term stay on Mars. Develop those facilities and you can use then either place, but please don't try and sell the load of crap that Mars missions need to be launched from the Moon. Building facilities to build ships on the Moon will never be a cost effective way to get to Mars when the
difference in energy to reach either is negligible.

It also takes less energy to reach the Moon from Mars than it does from Earth and Mars has more resources than the Moon to build a base. Should we go to Mars first and build a base there before thinking about going to the Moon? No! If there is a reason to go to either on its own merit it should be a direct goal not piggybacked on another. There could and should of course be some dovetailing such as exploration of the lunar poles piggybacked on some Mars hardware flight tests.

Regards,
Mark