"the rotted soul of today's Republican Party"

Glenn Greenwald rocks my world:

The reason we basically block out from our public discourse the effects our behavior has on innocent human beings -- the reason, for instance, we don't bother to count Iraqi victims and the reason we exempt our own behavior from any sort of scrutiny other than the most self-absorbed -- is because that's the only way that the propaganda can be sustained ("Freedom is on the March. We're Liberating Them. They're so Grateful. Winning Hearts and Minds"). Is there anyone who could make a list of all of the pros and cons from our invasion of Iraq and -- while including the hundreds of thousands of innocent dead human beings and the 4 million who are displaced -- argue that it was worth it? What kind of moral depravity would allow that argument to be made?

Why, the kind found at All Things Conservative, for one.

Just listen to the repulsive laughter and boisterous cheers in the first video from the GOP South Carolina debate crowd, where Swaggering Tough Guy/Draft Avoider Fred Thompson (pathetically reading from cue cards) mocks Islam and issues playground war taunts. It's as adolescent as it is depraved. Yet that's the rotted soul of today's Republican Party (and much of our cheering press corps). Not that it really matters much, but threats of that sort -- like the ones issued all year by Bush to invade Iran -- are clear violations of the U.N. charter which, as a treaty to which we are a party, happens to be (yawn) binding law in the U.S. pursuant to our Constitution's Article VI:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

And one of the leading GOP candidates is now speaking openly about having permanent bases in Iraq for 100 years -- exactly what we swore to the world we wouldn't do prior to our invasion while mocking as Arab Street Paranoids those who believed that was our intention. Of course, Iran is ruled by warmongering militants and religious fanatics who are a grave threat to world peace and threaten other nations.