An interesting comment from Chris Anderson

To a much less good essay by Matthew Yglesias.

I kind of came at this from an opposite direction Matt. I was pretty much opposed to invading Iraq from the beginning, not because I was convinced one way or the other by the justifications for war but because I was convinced that, regardless of those justifications, the Bush crowd would fuck it up. Not the military action itself, which I had little doubt would succeed, but the lead up and the follow through on that action.

I think history and current events have vindicated all of my fears on those points. Bush really is a fuck up and I think he will continue to be a fuck up as long as anyone gives him any kind of responsibility over anything.

But, even despite that, over time I came to believe that, if properly presented, I could have been a hawk on the Iraq situation. But, like you and Josh, I came to the conclusion that there just wasn't sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the threat was so imminent that it was necessary to wreck 50 years of international cooperation in order to engage in a unilateral pre-emptive action.

I am convinced that the UN would have eventually backed military action in Iraq though it might have taken another year of inspections and wrangling and concessions to reach that point. If we had done so then we could have gone in under an umbrella of international support that would have made the subsequent maintain-the-peace operation that much easier to sustain.

Instead we are now one of the most distrusted nations on Earth essentially alone in the task of maintaining order in one of the most chaotic hellholes in the entire world, with all the commenserate death, destruction and financial ruin that such a situation entails.

Thank you Mr. Bush for proving my misgivings to be spot on.

-- also at Chris Anderson's website - Interesting Times.

Chris also has taken up an idea I had once - track the candidates by media stories using google new search. Here is a portion of the latest report
This Week (6/11)
1 John Kerry 2490 16.1%
2 Bob Graham 2280 14.8%
3 Howard Dean 2140 13.9%
4 Joe Lieberman 2130 13.8%
5 John Edwards 2490 13.2%
6 Dick Gephardt 1740 11.3%
7 Dennis Kucinich 1220 7.9%
8 Al Sharpton 860 5.6%
9 Carol Moseley Braun 539 3.5%