I see. Let me try this one on for size: "Abstractly speaking, People who take Tom Brosz's position are the same thing as Nazis and mass murderers, not that I think this applies to tom Brosz".

Go for it. God knows I've gotten it before, although, thank goodness, not here. But you had better be able to back it up with a foundation for that abstract comparison.

It might be that the term "Holocaust denier" is being treated by you as an epithet, or code word,* instead of a specific description of a mental fixation, which is why you didn't bother to follow the abstraction through.

I am using it as a very obvious example of people who, for the most part, are not professed Nazis or people engaged in evil acts, but make excuses for evil in the face of overwhelming evidence against their position. What's the motivation? Do such people end up encouraging evil? Where is the line drawn when they become part of the problem?

I have met anti-Semites who believe whole-heartedly in the Holocaust, and believe it was shut down way too soon. It's not hard to judge this viewpoint as evil. It's easy when someone is way over the other side of the line.

You can easily categorize an American as seditious who posted U.S. military positions on the internet for the use of the insurgency (example only. I know of no one who has done this.) It's not that easy to judge a well-known politician who demands immediate withdrawal of our troops, even though it's obvious that this also encourages the enemy. "Aid and comfort" covers a lot of territory besides secretly shipping ammunition to Zarqawi, and that's what makes this a difficult problem. At what point does someone stop being a concerned critic, and starts being a supporter of the other side? I don't have a pat answer to this.

I do know that when you go to a football game, and listen to the fans, you can tell which people want which side to win. Even when all of them are objectively talking about what's actually happening on the field, the attitude comes through. When the home team is behind, which fan says "maybe he can run it, or make the pass? Hey, he's made longer passes this game. We could still pull it out." And which fan says "you know, the receiver has dropped a lot of the passes. Could be he'll get sacked again, and the clock is getting really low."

None of these are lies. None of these are outlanding speculations. But among the realistic possibilities, picking and choosing is taking place.

When this becomes consistent through the whole game, then you can figure that sides have been picked. Bowser, by virtue of scores of posts, may not have picked a side he wants to win, but he sure as hell has picked a side he wants to lose.

I appreciate such a civil reply to an admittedly cranky post, and I took the time to go back and fish up examples of Bowser claiming that the insurgents represent the popular will of Iraq as a whole.

"Vast majority of the population"

More on popular support

Even the most expansive estimates of active support of the insurgency (not active fighters) is only about 200,000 people, less than 1 percent of the population of Iraq. And even the simple logic that the Sunnis are a minority compared to the Kurds and Shiites does not seem to make a dent in him.

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*Incidentally, this is exactly how you use "Nazi" in your first sentence. I obviously have nothing in common with the National Socialist philosophy concerning states, history, the role of the citizen, their bizarre racial theories, or anything else. The word "Nazi," as you use it, has no more objective function or connection to a real description than calling me a "motherf***er," and fills the same role in the sentence.