Byrne to Krauthammer to . . . yuck!

In the Chi Trib op-ed infield today, at short, Dennis Byrne, on media bias:

Like a gravely ill patient that refuses to listen to a glum diagnosis, too many of my colleagues greet criticisms of a liberal media bias with a closed-minded, "I'm sick of hearing it."

and

some journalists give little credence to such official, attributable reports [as U.S. Agency for International Development has about rebuilding Iraq on its web site]. In today's upside-down world, official government reports don't carry the same weight as whispered, unattributed reports.

and

the media might give more thought to being less defensive, and more objective, not just in covering the news, but also in evaluating their own performance. The public would appreciate that kind of good news.

At second, Charles Krauthammer on historian Francis Fukuyama, heralded as an ex-neocon who got religion during a 2004 lecture by K.:

For Fukuyama to assert that [in my lecture] I characterized [the Iraq war] as "a virtually unqualified success" is simply breathtaking. My argument then, as now, was the necessity of this undertaking, never its assured success. And it was necessary because, as I said, there is not a single, remotely plausible alternative strategy for attacking the root causes of 9/11: "the cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world--oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism."

I'd like to be able to say I was saying just that the other day: we couldn't sit there and do nothing after being attacked.  We'd done too much of that.  And that cauldron K. spoke of is something we cannot ignore.

 

At first -- wait, he's out in left field, what's he doing there? -- is Derrick Z. Jackson, whom we find maundering and caterwauling about the great Satan in the White house:

President Bush said he invaded Iraq to rid the world of a madman. It is ever-more clear Bush went mad to start it.

Yes!  He has a New York Times story to prove it!  Saddam H. posed a "planetary threat," he says ironically.  He's still on that tangent: Bush lied!  If we only had stayed in Afghanistan!  Unless we never should have gone there either.  He thinks Iraq, "closer to civil war than stability" (he says), would be better off with Saddam in charge.

We took out a madman with madness. At a minimum, there should be hearings, with Bush under oath. With any more details like this, the next step is impeachment.

He's chasing flies, I guess.