...when in my opinion you are demonstrating an absolute failure to gain any insight from the past 5 years? In otherwords- people who think the way you do are going to act in a way consistent with beating yourself over the head with a large brick, all the while deriding those who point out the obvious problems with such actions.

If you read the federalist papers and some of the other important literature that served as the guiding spirit in the creation and early days of our democracy, you'll see that discourse was viewed as a methodology of forging an informed consensus, from which the electorate could and should act. The point of this action was, through democratic process, to execute the will of the people in a way that also insulated the people from the excesses of mob mentality.

What I see in you, and in the 'Zone, and in America in general is that discourse has decayed so far that its not even about consensus, nor even about 'being right', but never being wrong. For any informed shift in political action in a democracy, it is absolutely essential that at least a substantial minority are capable of reaching the conclusion that they have been wrong, and shifting how they vote. And if political discourse has so decayed in this country to the point where its chief function is to never admit being wrong, then how will 'we the people' ever shift course?

Regardless if Bush is a monkey or a god on a golden stallion,and regardless if the republican view on abortion, economics or gun ownership is gloriously right or completely wrong, and even regardless if it was right to invade Iraq in the first place, the actions taken over the last 4 years of operations in Iraq have completely failed by every rational empirical metric. The region, on which we are completely dependent on for oil, is heading for serious unrest and possible war. Iraq is heading towards genocide at an ever increasing pace.

So why can't you and others smell the coffee? Why is it that I'm still left picking through arguments about how you guys were never wrong and I (and anyone elsedeemed a 'gursh-daang lib-ral') was never right. Eventually, the rhetoric has to run out of gas in its rapid egress from reality. You simply can not look at the last 4 years in Iraq, and the last 5 years in Afghanistan and tell me that anything even remotely close to victory or stability or pacification or 'de-al-qaedafication' or anything has been carried out there.

Beyond that, at least WRT Iraq, none of the original justifications turned out to be true. There were no WMD, there were no active ties with Al-Qaeda. And even the oft-repeated 'fall back' justification, born in the hours just before the invasion: that we were doing it all for democracy and stability... that has failed in the face of historical fact as well! Purple fingers waved in front of cameras aside, Iraq teeters on the brink of total genocidal collapse, and law and order are as hard to find as Mulla Omar and Bin Laden are in Afghanistan.

So, if you want to piss and moan about 'the same old ground', why don't you ask yourself why? I don't care how many arguments you pose to a true believer, no matter how many times you exhibit empirical fact... They are never wrong, and you are never right. So the arguments will forever appear to be the dog chasing its tail... No matter what.

So if we get new material, I have no belief whatsoever that your arguments will be any less or more predictable than they are now. You will be no less 'never wrong' than you are now. And our discussions will likely follow the same endless cycle.

The unfortunate thing about that brick you keep banging over your head is that, as long as you keep voting, its my head under that brick too. So please, by all means, stop with the damn brick.

Yeti