They eat their own!

Reasonable bloggers and reporters resort to cannibalism.

On the menu? Michael Kinsley, the "iconoclastic" La Times editorial page head.

Mr. Kinsley sound a little too foolish--and not consistently, at that, in regards to the much beloved DSM. For instance, he notes:

C's focus on the dog that didn't bark — the lack of discussion about the aftermath of war — was smart and prescient. But even on its face, the memo is not proof that Bush had decided on war. It states that war is "now seen as inevitable" by "Washington." That is, people other than Bush had concluded, based on observation, that he was determined to go to war. There is no claim of even fourth-hand knowledge that he had actually declared this intention. Even if "Washington" meant administration decision-makers, rather than the usual freelance chatterboxes, C was only saying that these people believed that war was how events would play out.

To which, Granfalloon Junction has much hair rending to do:

Depending on which paragraph of Kinsley's column one reads, the Memo's revelations -- that the Bush administration had decided on war in advance of going to the U.N., and that such a diplomatic effort was being urged by the British as a way to create the legal justification required for their own participation in that war -- are either an overblown part of a "paranoid theory," or else so obvious that "you don't need a secret memo" to know that they are true.

He moans on with outtakes from the latest memo, as though he's found the "smoking gun":

1. The US Government's military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace. But, as yet, it lacks a political framework. In particular, little thought has been given to creating the political conditions for military action, or the aftermath and how to shape it.

2. When the Prime Minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change, provided that certain conditions were met: efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine Crisis was quiescent, and the options for action to eliminate Iraq's WMD through the UN weapons inspectors had been exhausted.

3. We need now to reinforce this message and to encourage the US Government to place its military planning within a political framework, partly to forestall the risk that military action is precipitated in an unplanned way by, for example, an incident in the No Fly Zones. This is particularly important for the UK because it is necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally support military action. Otherwise we face the real danger that the US will commit themselves to a course of action which we would find very difficult to support.

Can he spell non-sequitor? None of this contradicts what Kinsley said, because these new revelations do not explicitly reveal that Bush said he wanted a premptive invasion of Iraq and needed a pretext. It's more implication, based on the same perceptions by this one official 'C'.

Reasonables like this are even willing to eat their own. The idea that somehow they'll take down Bush and Blair, a la Woodwards and Bernstein v. Nixon, appears too much to resist a modicum of judgement. There just isn't enough here to prove the conspiracy they're so sure exists. But it won't stop them from tilting when they should withdraw. Onward, then, to the next windmi--er, Giant!

Update: More cannibals! Apparently one can string as many isolated events together as one can and it produces a convincing argument. Sure, and a pile of all kinds of junk pulls itself together and forms a Mazzarodi donchaknow!

What an education this has been! A whole league of Reasonables out there--believe the MSM is too biased--toward conservatives! Whoa!