Political this and that

1. Major Thomas Fleener is a brave man. As a lawyer for the defendants at Gitmo, he has said the trials are show trials. He says his clients were tortured.

2. The reaction on BBC to the remark that the Gitmo suiciders did it for PR was torn apart with listener reactions posted on the site, although a few think the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. Who is a terrorist depends on which side someone is on.

3, I am on a “baddies” list as the token liberal, the only WITT (We are all in this together) with a number of YOYOs (Your on Your Own). Yesterday I heard one of them, who was my age, was killed in a car crash. Only one other member on the list, a former co-worker and I were against Iraq, predicting exactly what would happen. The man who died was shocked when two years ago I said that the sooner the US lost the better. He couldn’t imagine an American saying that. The billions we’ve wasted in pushing death would not have been squandered. However, more important if we hadn’t gone in or lost early on, a lot of Americans and Iraqis would be alive today. To me, we will lose, the only question remains when. Although I almost never agreed with the man, I will miss him.

4. Seeing the founder of DailyKos on Meet the Press was great. They had a conservative to balance. If only they balanced each conservative with a liberal and a few on the inbetweens wouldn't be bad either.