I probably need to make a new department for the "it's not a war, dammit" (only Congress can declare war, and it did not), but Joan Walsh's piece tonight in Salon has some of the clearest writing about opposing war but not opposing troops that I've yet seeN:

In a dishonest piece of writing in the Weekly Standard this week, "The War for Liberalism," cakewalk conservative William Kristol described the Democrats as divided between brave "Dick Gephardt liberals," the "patriots" who back the war-supporting former minority leader, and the despicable "Dominique de Villepin left," -- there's the French slur again, after the foreign minister who led the U.N. opposition to Bush's war -- whose adherents "hate conservatives with a passion that seems to burn brighter than their love of America, and so, like M. de Villepin, they can barely bring themselves to call for an American victory." And though Kristol's list of de Villipin leftists is short on names, one of the handful he includes is Nancy Pelosi -- despite her vote "in support and appreciation" of Bush's conduct of the war.

Kristol is wrong: Most war critics still hope for an American victory, one that results in as little loss of life and as much freedom for Iraqis as possible. But it's already clear that he and his neocon friends designed a war that wouldn't ensure we could do either, and they and their war deserve criticism. There will be a reckoning for bullies like Kristol, and all the pampered, pink-cheeked scions of no-sacrifice who sold this war dishonestly. Yet I fear there will be a lot more Iraqis and Americans dead before that day comes.

Yet more evidence that Salon is necessary despite its confused publishing of dishonest Andrew Sullivan and, before him, David Horowitz. God, how I miss the days of honest conservatism.