He's a mediocre writer to boot.

Sure as fuck didn't, David.

Why his drivel (and that of Maureen Dowd, and that Douthat asshole) is tolerated on the NYT opinion page is beyond me.

Who spent a lot of time as a Veteran for Peace in Crawford, Texas...convinced of the immorality of the Invasion of Iraq under false pretenses...

All I have to say to Mr. Brooks is...

"F**k you. You self-absorbed pretentious piece of shit."

You, your party and those who give you a pass will be judged by history.

You should embrace Trump and hope he succeeds because the alternative is to be judged by history...and it will not be kind to you and your ilk.

Rather than winning the "war on terror" it recruited the next generation of terrorists, leading directly to ISIS and ongoing horrors for the unfortunate people of that region -- perhaps a million dead so far.

Bush wasn't right -- the case for war was built on a pack of lies. When he left office I wrote this poem for what I'd say to his face if I could:

I'd tell you to go fuck yourself
But that is much to kind
Because if you could perform that feat
You'd take pleasure in your behind

I'd like to say eat shit and die
But you deserve much more
You should suffer all the grief and pain
Of your misbegotten war

Though I can never make you think
Or feel, or understand
I'll take solace when you hear your name
Cursed throughout the land

From inside a lonely prison cell
Dark and bare and cold
Where every day you pay for your crimes
Until you're sick, heartbroken, and old

When you finally leave the earth
You fucked over oh so well
If there is a God and afterlife
You're going straight to hell

light in his darkness. The poem's good, by the way!

But he always will be in my book.

I will never let this go, which is why I still post the poem.

the polls. Actually, many just hid behind the UN or said we needed more countries to invade with us. I consider those people not having actually been against the war.

Were called fringe elements and morning joe said we should be executed

Am sick to death of them receiving airspace and ink

Our entire world would be different had the votes been counted in Florida and the real winner of the Presidency, Al Gore, taken his rightful role. No 9/11, no Iraq War, no unethical tax cuts for the richest Americans.

The election shenanigans started were in full swing with Bush Jr; the Repubs have expanded on them with each election cycle, to the extent they’re now working with a foreign adversary to screw with our democracy.

...chances of survival were reduced from "not good" to "zero" by it.

By the combination of the invasion and a self-interested jackass of a mission director who was determined that her mission would NOT disturb the war effort.

Immediately after launch NASA techs were working hard the problem of an unknown amount of launch damage sustained to the underside of a wing. There was no EVA capability brought on that flight, so satellite photography was the only option for looking. The mission techs quickly and correctly made the request to DoD.

But before a spy satellite could look the mission director came down on her techs like a ton of bricks. And yanked the request from DoD.

Due to that action Columbia would re-enter with NASA just assuming the undercarriage damage wasn't catastrophic.

That assumption was wrong.

Had the reconn request stood NASA would have known early in the mission that Columbia could not survive re-entry. NASA would have postponed re-entry as long as possible while it TRIED to prep and launch the next scheduled shuttle, faster than had ever been done before. Was it likely we'd have been able to launch a rescue shuttle in time? No. Most likely that effort would have failed. But that's something no one can be certain of without our having at least tried.

As it happened in early 2003 the one shot, however slim, the Columbia crew had of surviving, NASA didn't even attempt. Apollo 13 it wasn't.

NASA didn't even try because it didn't know Columbia's condition, and it didn't know that because the mission director had angrily, seemingly even irrationally, cancelled the photography that would have shown Columbia was no longer safe.

The reports dance all around discussion of why she did that. But it's extremely easy to suss it out oneself. Our spy satellites and their operators were very heavily engaged right then by, guess what? The run-up to invading Iraq.

It was the NASA mission director's first tiime in that job, her big career opportunity. If you remember the political atmosphere at the time, the protests against the coming invasion were of a scale unprecedented globally. Against this, the neocons and rightwing hate industry were lashing out viciously at any and everyone steppng an inch in the way of Dubya's Big Roll To War.

Damned if that mission director was going to attract attention and criticism by tying up a spy satellite and its operators at a time like that!

The criticism she might get aside, what if the re-tasking caused something to be missed in Iraq, that in turn led to an American casualty? No, she adamantly was NOT about to allow her techs to re-task a spy satellite on her shuttle mission... not right THEN.

With that unilateral decision, that surprised and disturbed her techs, she sealed the fates of 7 American astronauts. They had zero chance of surviving from that moment on.

Again, rescue would have been a long shot anyway. But Bush's childish, dishonest war and this one person's total deference to it, took even that long shot hope away. NASA mission management, in self-imposed ignorance, negligently just hoped for the best and allowed Columbia's astronauts to burn up on re-entry... without either the astronauts or their families even knowing what was coming.