Charley Reese

http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040813/index.php

"For what have these brave young men and women sacrificed their lives? I think Rudyard Kipling has the answer. "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied," he wrote in a bitter poem after the war that had claimed his only son. There were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no cooperation with al-Qaida, there was no threat, gathering or otherwise, to the United States, and, as of Aug. 2, 912 young men and women have died to prove that."

Reese is old school conservative. I first read him in the Orlando Sentinel. The column also talks about the situation in Iraq outside the Green Zone. He has nothing good to say about the Green Zone journalists or the general situation in Iraq.

that for 70 miles every single Iraqi police post had been abandoned."



That is staggering. Great article. Thanx for the post.

I used to read his column years ago and he exhibited a kind of pragmatic conservatism that was somewhat conforting because you knew he might listen to reason. I especially liked his columns comparing the drug war to Prohibition. Here's some quotes from recent columns:

And if the present administration is re-elected, it will probably get a lot worse, because those people are world-class blunderers. God only knows what other stupid tricks they will pull if they get to stay four more years.
http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040809/index.php

While capitalism is a proven system of producing goods, it is also a proven system of consuming natural resources and exploiting human labor. The insidious notion of measuring the success of anything by profits has to be eliminated. To paraphrase, what profit it a man to make all the money in the world if he loses his life and the lives of his children and grandchildren?
http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040811/index.php

There's more. Every column I looked at had something you might find in a more liberal analysis. Reese thinks liberals are socialists, his idealogy is conservative and libertarian but he has not drunk the Kool-Aid. This stuff is a worth a look.