David (Dean) Broder steps in it

The two critical sentences in his piece:

How does Broder feel about bloggers?

"Mike Gravel, a strident critic...[made a proposal] that not even a deranged blogger could love"

How does he feel about liberals and the military?

"...retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who repeatedly invoked the West Point motto of 'Duty, Honor, Country,' forgetting that few in this particular audience have much experience with, or sympathy for, the military."

My comments to Broder:

As you probably know by now, the blogger Oliver Willis (Your comment that "Mike Gravel, a strident critic...[made a proposal] that not even a deranged blogger could love" makes your feelings towards bloggers quite clear.) is calling you a liar over your comment that "...retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who repeatedly invoked the West Point motto of 'Duty, Honor, Country,' forgetting that few in this particular audience have much experience with, or sympathy for, the military."

This is far less true for Democrats than it is for the chickenhawk administration of G.W. Bush and Co. Bush and followers like to TALK about their love for the troops, but they very rarely follow it up with any real action. People battling in Iraq have been pointing out that they lack the equipment necessary to do the job and numerous critics, bloggers among them, have pointed out that the number of troops in Iraq is about a third of what it needs to be if the US expects to accomplish anything there.

How does the President "love" the troops? Why, by accusing anyone who doesn't like HIS war plans of not loving the troops! The confusion here, and I believe it's one that has been deliberately and consciously fostered by Bush & Co., is to conflate "the troops" with "the mission." Just as Saddam Hussein was constantly conflated with Osama bin Laden, just as the Bush Administration constantly invoked 9-11 when discussing the Iraq situation, just as our troops are told during training, that the US is in Iraq to avenge 9-11, we're now being told that we can't criticize the mission in Iraq because that means we're criticizing the troops.

As a member of one of the Philadelphia chapters of Veterans for Peace, I can asure you that not only are veterans actively involved with the anti-war movement, but we have received absolutely zero disrespect from those who have protested the war.