So I'm watching the Colbert Report tonight (August 1 edition) and his guess is TNR's Peter Beinart pushing his book
The Good Fight and I frankly am surprised by what I hear. I was present for the discussions of his book, mostly at TPMCafe where he reaches largely the same conclusions those of us who opposed the war reached. Tonight on the Colbert Report he said some things that I cannot believe I heard.
I'm sure someone will get a video up soon, but let me just summarize what I heard:
1. The war was a mistake and we shouldn't have gone
2. Even in the run up to war, there was enough evidence for him to figure out that Saddam had no nukes and was no threat and he blew it by not seeing it
3. The inspectors were doing their jobsm, neutralizing Saddam and they had the access they needed
4. The results of our situation in Iraq today are worse than the consequences of leaving Saddam in power
Even Colbert seemed a little surprised by that last one.
To those of us in the blogosphere, these things are nothing new, but to hear them articulated by Peter Beinart of all people and on the Colbert Report was not something I expected to see. It also is a reason hope, because of even so called "liberal hawks" like Beinart can see sense and articulate points like these then we can present a united front against the Republicans, leave their enablers (like Lieberman) twisting in the wind and help us drive down those Saddam/WMD numbers.
At this point I don't care about an apology from Beinart for believing that anti-Iraq War people were not just wrong but cowards or unAmerican, I just want to get on with beating the GOP and starting to fix this mess.