Meanwhile, in Connecticut, Joe Lieberman continues his disinformation campaign.

First, he calls for the number of US forces embedded with Iraqis to be doubled or tripled, so that we may hasten the training of the Iraqi forces and accelerate our withdrawal from Iraq.

That’s a tortured (no pun intended) argument to begin with…but then Lieberman goes on to say that that doubling or tripling could come from redeployment of forces, rather than actually committing additional troops.

I am still trying to understand that line of reasoning. If you double or triple our number of embedded soldiers, without decreasing the number of soldiers elsewhere, then you are increasing the number of soldiers, period. What difference does it make where they come from? (Well, of course it makes a difference if you’re the soldier involved.)

Lieberman continued his old argument that he does not support an open-ended commitment to staying in Iraq, but that he opposes setting a timeline for withdrawal.

And I continue not to understand how, if you oppose a timeline for withdrawal, you are not supporting an open-ended commitment.

Finally, Lieberman responded to the recent intelligence report saying that the Iraq war has increased the threat of anti-US terrorism by saying that the increased threat would make troop withdrawal too dangerous.

In other words, we sent troops in, which increased the threat of terrorism. But now we can not take them out, because of the threat of terrorism that they have created. This is a prescription for a permanent US military presence in Iraq.

It is, I think, in the nature of a bad war, a fundamentally ill-conceived war based on lies and false premises, that it promotes Orwellian rationalizations. “We may have created the danger, but we can’t leave now because it’s too dangerous.”

I am not a military historian, but it seems to me that history judges favorably those who resist the twisted rationales and labrynthine language of a bad war, while those who succumb to it—intelligent people who compromise their intelligence and integrity to defend their mistakes or attempt to further their ambitions—forever stain their records.

This is exactly what Joe Lieberman is doing. I wonder if he ever lays awake in bed at night and thinks, My God, what am I saying? What am I doing?

Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. I don’t know which option is worse.