I've been watching as much General Petraeus coverage as I can and I don't think I've seen any Villager go as far as the Washington Post's David Ignatius did with Wolf Blitzer yesterday. The Village Collective is transforming into The TownieBorg and has been very depressed at this latest sex scandal involving their true hero.

BLITZER: All right. Let's bring in David Ignatius, the columnist from "The Washington Post." He's joining us from "the Washington Post." And the U.S. Army general, Mark Kimmitt, retired, who's worked at the State Department as well as the military.

General Kimmitt, a lot of people are asking, these indiscretions now from the highest levels, these totally respected generals. It may be part of a bigger, systemic problem within the military. Do you believe that?

GEN. MARK KIMMITT (RET.), UNITED STATES ARMY: Well, I really don't. I mean, what makes these unique is sort of the level that these are happening. The fact remains that, at any period of time, a certain number of generals are being investigated for indiscretions. In this case, two four stars, three if you include General Ward.

But the military needs to take an internal look, really evaluate to see if this is, in fact, something institutional or this is just episodic.

BLITZER: Look at these poll numbers, David. We asked -- not we, but NBC and "The Wall Street Journal" in a recent poll, do you have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence in the U.S. Military? Seventy-six percent said they do. The presidency, 42 percent. The Supreme Court, 33 percent. Will these events, though, over the past few days, change that confidence in the military?

DAVID IGNATIUS, COLUMNIST, "WASHINGTON POST": Well, it's just too early to be sure. We don't have the facts on General Allen. It's simply an investigation. I do think that the public's confidence in the military is tied up with public admiration for the job the military has done and these ten long years of war, in very difficult battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as General Kimmitt knows, as well as anyone.

And one obvious takeaway for me, as I read these really quite sad personal stories of General Petraeus and now the investigation of General Allen, is these commanders and all of the officers and soldiers serving under them had been away from home for so long, on repeated, prolonged deployments.

General Petraeus spent most of the last ten years apart from his wife, Holly. I can't say about General Allen, but that's just a tremendous burden for people to bear, personally. It's easy to forget about it and kind of chase after the details of the scandal, but it's the thing I'm thinking about when you ask that question, Wolf, about confidence in the military, that these people have performed well, but under such difficult circumstances.

Holy moly. The long and winding road of St. Petraeus. it sounds like a song.

He's been gone, oh for so very long
He's been gone, oh so very far away.
Longings stirred deep inside.
When her lips moved he had to say.

Come Near Me. I Can See Clearly. Troubled Eyes Tell Me to Embrace The Moment.
So, Come Near Me. I Can See Clearly. You And I In The Sands of Afghanistan,
Walking Through The Heated Sand, It's Hard To Breathe, Please Don't Leave

[**My Terror Gap Segment on The Big Picture w/ Thom Hartmann begins at 6:47 of this video]

Like most New Yorkers (where I grew up), other Americans, and sentient beings throughout the globe, I am elated that Osama bin Laden will no longer be able to ply his trade. It's been a long process, but the man who turned that beautiful September day back in 2001 into a nightmare for me, as I was watching from Delancey Street, and the rest of the world whether watching from the streets or on their television set, has finally been truly held accountable for his actions.

But now is not the time to simply celebrate and forget that there are many more out there like him. They may lack his funding or charisma, but they do not lack his ambition. This is why it was ironic that the same week we finally got our man, we learned that 90% of those on the Terror Watch List who have tried since 2005 have successfully purchased guns (to say nothing of explosives, which they also have legal access to).

This is a serious gap in our law that needs to be addressed. To quote from a report by Senator Frank Lautenberg:

In June 2009, Sen. Lautenberg and Congressmen John Conyers (D-MI) and Bobby Scott (D-VA) released a new GAO report finding that, from February 2004 to February 2009, there were 963 cases in which a known or suspected terrorist attempted to buy a gun. In 90 percent of those cases -- a total of 865 times -- they were cleared to proceed with that purchase. One of those cases involved the purchase of explosives.

According to the report, which the lawmakers requested in July 2008, only 10 percent of the time were terrorist suspects denied weapons because of disqualifying factors, such as a felony conviction or illegal immigrant status. Being on the Terrorist Watch List is currently not a disqualifying factor for buying firearms.

In response to this report, Sen. Lautenberg has introduced legislation to close the "terror gap" in the nation's gun laws by giving the Attorney General authority to stop the sale of guns or explosives to terrorists. Under current federal law, there is no legal way to stop someone on the Terrorist Watch List from buying guns and explosives.

We should push for Senator Lautenberg's legislation to be passed now. It has had bipartisan support in the past, including the strong backing of former President George W. Bush.

If you don't think we should get on this forthwith, just remember, there are those who will want to take revenge for bin Laden's killing. And there are those who will continue to plan attacks on the United States because it is such a tempting target. They may not have the capabilities to pull off a large scale attack like the one on 9/11. But by allowing them to purchase Jared Loughner's Glock with an assault clip, or (God help us) explosives, we are asking for trouble.

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I used to respect David Ignatius and enjoy his columns. I enjoyed his narration between Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski in "America and the World." Then he took a few helicopter rides with Gen. Petraeus and I think they replaced him with a pod person. That's the only rationale I can think of with his recent comments about President Obama's speech about an Afghanistan strategy.

Military commanders appear comfortable with Obama's decision, although they wish it hadn't taken so long.

You mean that after six years of asking for reinforcements, to include the immediate predecessor to Gen. McChrystal, that the military officers are upset about six-month strategy review? Hmmmmm.

The most important question about Obama's strategy isn't political but pragmatic: Will it succeed? He has defined success downward, by focusing on the ability to transfer control to the Afghans. He shows little interest in the big ideas of counterinsurgency and insists he will avoid "a nation-building commitment in Afghanistan." That will make it easier to declare a "good enough" outcome in July 2011, if not victory.

What exactly did Ignatius think was the point of military operations in Afghanistan if not to create the conditions where the Afghans could take charge of their own security? Did he think that we were just supposed to coddle the Afghani security forces forever, or until we kill every living Taliban? President Obama doesn't show interest in COIN because IT'S AN OPERATIONAL TACTIC - that's what the generals are paid to do. He just tells them what the end result is supposed to be, and whatever he decides is "good enough" is what we call victory conditions. It's not a hard concept.

Obama thinks that setting deadlines will force the Afghans to get their act together at last. That strikes me as the most dubious premise of his strategy. He is telling his adversary that he will start leaving on a certain date, and telling his ally to be ready to take over then, or else. That's the weak link in an otherwise admirable decision -- the idea that we strengthen our hand by announcing in advance that we plan to fold it.

Yeah, it's not as if setting a deadline worked in Iraq, right? Oh wait, it did. If we set the conditions for leaving, it does, at the least, allow the US government to plan resources and understand that this isn't an endless death spiral. It does force Karzai and company to understand that they won't have the US military as the palace guard forever. Here's a newsflash for David - the goal is al Qaeda. The Taliban aren't taking flying lessons or planning to smuggle themselves into the United States. We need to stop thinking that every nation needs the US military to hold their hand, and maybe, just maybe, people who live in a country can actually make a way toward their own goals and ambitions (even if they aren't the same as our own).

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John Amato has blogged about this and this clip from this week's The Chris Matthews Show is proof positive that the progressive blogosphere must be smart about picking battles in pushing a liberal agenda for America. Let's face it, you and I and the rest of the liberal blogosphere have been right more often than not and certainly exponentially over the Villagers that populate The Chris Matthews Show. But they're not ready to give up their coveted place at the table, and certainly not to upstart bloggers who don't have the decency to take them at their word any longer.

So to those oh-so-wise Beltway bobbleheads, we will be the "angry left" that Obama must marginalize in order to have a successful presidency. It won't be the Republicans with their bag of obstructionist tricks, ones of which WaPo's Ceci Connolly doesn't even have memory, that give Obama a hard time, it will be us, the "angry left." We are the ones to not give Obama a "honeymoon period" and we will be the ones fighting him as he attempts to execute his agenda.

Sigh. Do anyone of these chuckleheads ever consider that the reason the left has been so "angry" for the last eight plus years is that what we've said and what we've valued has been criticized, dismissed, sneered, condemned, denounced and our characters attacked? Of course not. And when the nation shows that they have awakened to what we've been saying all along and announced with their vote that they want to give the left a shot, we're still criticized, dismissed, sneered, condemned, denounced and our characters attacked because we might like to see some people actually reflective of our values in office.

Good to see the open minds of the Very Serious Villagers remain. Would that they would be so condemning of those who have been so very wrong all this time.

Transcripts (courtesy of Heather) below the fold

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"Bush administration officials, for all their bellicose rhetoric, still hope that diplomatic pressure -- backed by ever-tighter economic sanctions -- will persuade Iran to compromise." -- David Ignatius, Oct. 28, 2007

"In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own." -- David Ignatius, April 27, 2004

Media Bloodhound has the rebuttal.

David Ignatius' latest piece argues, with the possiblity of another terrorist attack, we should all be more united. Behind who or what? Well, that’s the tricky part.

Ignatius describes what he believes would happen in the wake of another deadly assault.

Liberals would blame the Bush administration for making America a more vulnerable target. Didn’t the war in Iraq inflame Muslim terrorists around the world? Wouldn’t we have been safer today if we had focused on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan rather than embarking on a costly war that has sapped the military and CIA and added to America’s enemies? These arguments aren’t imaginary: We hear them every day, almost as rehearsals for the post-attack finger-pointing.

And how would conservatives respond? They would blame liberals, who, in their view, have weakened America’s anti-terrorism defenses. Couldn’t we have stopped the bombers if critics hadn’t exposed the National Security Agency’s secret wiretapping program? Wouldn’t aggressive CIA interrogation techniques have yielded more intelligence that might have prevented the tragedy? Didn’t congressional demands to withdraw from Iraq embolden the terrorists? I can hear the voices on talk radio and cable news right now.

But like most David Broder columns, Ignatius leaves out the important parts.

The Risks in Reporting Real Stories in Baghdad

General Zinni became the latest man to say: " I think the American media is being made a scapegoat for what's going on out there."

David Ignatius

"By conservative counts, nearly 200 civilian men have been executed in the past two weeks and dumped on Baghdad's streets. Many have been hogtied. Some have had acid splashed on their faces. Others have been found without toes, fingers, eyes." Gettleman, who had been away from Iraq for more than a year, wrote that something fundamental had changed: The violence had "turned inward" into sectarian warfare...That is what the Iraqis see every night---But a reporter's job is to tell the truth, even when it hurts. Americans should be grateful that reporters such as Jill Carroll are risking their lives to chronicle this agonizing story -- and tell Americans not what they want to hear, but what they need to know...read on"

More from Joe on the Jill Carroll story:

What's a Friday night without a little O'Beirne? Snappy appeared on Hardball and was joined by David Ignatius from the Washington Post. He wasn't buying any of Kate's apologetic talking points and neither was Matthews.

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MATTHEWS: Well we know-I'm just going by the fact, I'm not a conspirator at all. In fact, I don't like conspiracy theories because they‘re generally not proven over time. I don‘t mind if they‘re proven, but they rarely are. What I do know as a fact, this will probably go down in the Encyclopedia of Britannica for one reason. The vice president didn't call the president the whole weekend to tell him what happened. That is a question I put to you. Why didn‘t he call the president, tell him what happened?

O‘BEIRNE: Why would he have to personally discuss this with the president? I just don‘t understand.

MATTHEWS: David, your thoughts?

IGNATIUS: If I accidentally shot somebody, I‘d call my boss. I‘d do that right away. I mean, I‘m sorry, but just on its face, common sense. If the vice president of the United States accidentally shoots somebody, you don‘t know how serious it is, you don‘t wait until the next day to disclose that to the public. It just doesn‘t work that way. That‘s not how our system works. I‘m sorry. You can talk all you want about AMA and the medical reports, but that misses the basic point. This was allowed to pass much beyond any reasonable time-line.

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We actually saw something that has been missing from the talking heads shows for sometime now. Usually it's two wingnuts against a faux liberal journalist like Byron York and Peggy Noonan vs Washington Post reporter, but this time the tables were turned and Kate had to answer from two different panelists that weren't buying her manure.

To follow up on "Freak Boy" from the Whittington video:

commenters:

"Perhaps he is there to "catapult the propaganda!"

"that freak is just an evil "worker bee" with a head full of chlobenzorex "

"That SS-bot over Whit's shoulder is F*n scarin' me. And when Harry says 'Friday' (2:50) the stormtroopers eyes dart over to the other handler! FREEPY."

"Either he is the victim of anamorphic distortion, or he is an alien"

So who is this guy?

By David Ignatius of the Washington Post.

The mixing of anti-terrorism policy with the 2004 presidential campaign is becoming destructive. It is creating a vicious cycle of hype, skepticism and mistrust that puts the country's security at risk.

The dangers of politicizing terrorism were clear in this month's announcement about potential attacks on financial centers in the New York area and in Washington. When Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge disclosed the threats on Aug. 1, he faced immediate skepticism about whether the intelligence was valid. Sadly, the Bush administration had helped create this climate of public suspicion by overusing its elaborate, color-coded system of terrorism warnings. After a terrorism advisory by Attorney General John Ashcroft last spring was pooh-poohed the same day by Ridge, some people wondered whether these warnings were being used for political effect. In the administration's eagerness to demonstrate the seriousness of the threat against financial centers, something terrible happened. An official in Washington or Pakistan, it's not clear which, leaked the name of the captured al Qaeda operative who was a main source of the information -- a 25-year-old Pakistani named Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. His name was leaked to the New York Times on Aug. 1, the same day the terror warning was issued, in a seeming attempt to bolster the credibility of the intelligence report.

Whatever the reason for the leak, it was disastrous for intelligence operations.