I feel like the cop in the movie that's about to retire and then there's this really important case that pops up...

I can't help it. She is so mindfuckingly infuriating. She, and all her fucking co-war cohorts, fucked up huge and got almost all of America to go along with her. Now, she looks back on the smoldering shit pile she helped create and says "well, what have we all learned today, children?" with a smug air of infallibility, and only ever so faintly veneered loathing for those of us who manged to come down from 9/11 mania before Bush started showing everyone his raging hard on for Iraq. Fuck you so fucking hard, Megan. there's no point in saying anyhting else. I don't care where I'm sending the discourse and how juevenille it seems. The only thing the words can do anymore is serve as a vent for my thoroughly deserved, self-righteous anger. you want some fucking eloquence? I give you Freddie, from the comments. He's a less disallusioned and far stronger man than I (see, some of us can admit our mistakes even while we make them without bullshit ass qualifications. Yes, my patience is completely into the negative and my desire to even pretend to approach this with any kind of respect or intelligence is out the window. I know I'll regret this post tomorrow but I don't give a fuck. I just want to type the word "fuck" at you until my fingers bleed. FUCK FUCK FUCKITY YOU TYOU GFUCKING FUCKITY STUPID FUCKING FUCKITY WHORE. FUCK YOUR FUCKITY SELF IN THE FUCKING FUCKITY ASS WITH SOMETHING MORE PAINFULLY FUCKING SHAPED THAN THE FUCKING FUCKITIEST PAINFULLY FUCKING SHAPED OBJECT ONT HE FUCKING FUCKITY FACE OF THE FUCKITY PLANET.) Any typos in this post can be deleted and replaced with the word fuck, for clarity:

Look, I'll make this simple: saying things like "I am not a senior member of the Bush administration"

or "Even if I felt moved to apologize for the unmannered as if I were their mother, it wouldn't make you feel any better, because all the people you actually argued with would remain unrepentant."

or "I do not claim that the McArdles are totally above sacking the city, sowing the fields with salt, and leaving the bleached white skulls piled up at the gate as a warning to others."

or "But I am mostly mistaken for a fourteen-year-old boy, not the 70-year-old architect of our Iraq War strategy."

-- these statements have one purpose. And that is to make a joke of what you're saying. You say that of course you weep for the people killed and blah blah blah, but what possible reader could believe that this is anything other than an exercise in belittling and mockery? This is why people are angry with you, because you are making a (multiple post) show of apologizing while making it abundantly clear that you aren't. I mean, this:

If you want to be congratulated on getting it right on Iraq: congratulations.

is explicitly denigrating the people who you are ostensibly saying got it right. You are saying that war opponents are more interested in getting credit than in doing right. And this:

But if you had to pick only one, listen to the one who went wrong. They're far more likely to be able to accurately pinpoint their errors than the opponents are to usefully identify their strengths.

explicitly says that we should continue to ignore war opponents, as they were ignored before the war, because... what? War supporters have the lesson of getting it wrong? We've all had to learn that lesson thank you. But of course, the only operative point is that no matter how many times they get it right, principled war supporters cannot be listened to on foreign policy, because they aren't Very Serious.

The reason all of this matters is because it was precisely this kind of "politics of personality" that got us into this mess in the first place. You claim that you got it wrong because of bad information. But I suspect that isn't true. I suspect that, like so many others, you wanted to distance yourself from the weak-willed pacifists you made out war supporters to be. I suspect that you enjoyed the thrill of mocking "paleoliberals" and the old guard of the left. I suspect that information had nothing to do with it; I suspect that personality did. And thats what makes your continued, unapologetic mocking of the anti-war side so dangerous. Because it simply continues the cycle of the politics of resentment.

The fact is you know why people are mad, and when you write a post like this you know what you're doing. No one with a better than 3rd grade reading level could mistake this for anything other than derogatory towards the anti-war side. Can you really deny that, Megan? Can you read this back and claim it doesn't continue to treat war opponents as a joke? This post has a non-apology, a catalog of the reasons you were right to get it wrong, finger-wagging at those who criticize you, and the assertion that even now its best to trust those who failed so utterly to predict what would happen in Iraq.

And, for all that, you seem to expect sympathy. Sorry. I don't tolerate backhanded apologies from children and I won't from you.