I've got an idea. I think I know how this wonderful blog can be made more wonderful - with a simple rule.

I recently wrote a rather vitriolic diary about one of the frontpagers who had used their platform to spread misinformation about a progressive Democrat running for President. You can look it up if you care.

After much back and forth in the comments, I generally felt kinda bad for ripping into that one frontpager - no one disagreed that he'd been factually wrong, mind you, or that anything I said about his diary was untrue, but it was generally agreed I'd been too harsh about it. And I think that's fair. Which got me thinking, how can we avoid such incivility in the future. And I think I've got the answer:

An absolute standard of TRUTH.  more below...

I am all in favor of substantive debates on issues. I don't think any candidate should get anything like a free pass from substance, stictly on the basis of electability, charisma, whatever. But what really gets my goat are abusive, factless mischaracterizations of what our leaders say and stand for, especially when used to mislead the netroots community into believing that Democrats are something worse than what they really are.

Matt Stoller's frontpage lies about Barack Obama are something I thought I'd only see on GOP blogs. He offers readers the opportunity to criticize Obama not on what he really said (available here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/f pccga/ )
but rather on a made-up Matt synopsis:

I just read Vox Populi's diary on Obama entitled "Obama does it again 'Democrats hate the troops'" and I've just about had it up to here with this circular firing squad bullshit.

I like Barack Obama. I also like John Edwards. And Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, and to a lesser extent I can even live with Joe Biden or Hilllary Clinton. They're all about 100 times better than any Republican candidate, and when they make statements about their preferred policies on various issues (such as the war in Iraq), we should keep in mind that they all feel as we do in most ways: the war was a mistake in the first place (all but Clinton), has been terribly managed (all, period), and needs to be ended (all, again), with or without achieving an impossible victory.

And yet supporters of some of the trailing candidates, especially Edwards supporters but some others I'm sure as well, feel the need to slime leading candidates fairly or unfairly with the BS lie that they're pro-war. Vox Populi's latest slime is flat-out wrong on its face, as you'll see below:

Chris's frontpage post begs for a response from someone who is willing to see a smaller force remain behind in Iraq. So here's my response, and why it makes me appreciate Sen. Obama's stance, but not Sen. Clinton's.

First of all, I should clearly say that:
A. I opposed this war from the beginning (or before the beginning, really), and
B. I want to see the war brought to a speedy end, with American troops completely out of the cauldron that is the Iraqi Civil War.

That having been said, I think there are at least two significant missions (maybe three) which it would be irresponsible and morally reprehensible not to continue in Iraq, and which I believe can be continued by a much smaller (somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000, I'd guess) force, based entirely outside of Sunni Arab and Shiite regions of Iraq. And I'm not including the 'embassy mission' as one of these - that's sort of outside of any major calculations about our Iraq deployment, I'd say.

More below.

I'm going to post a series of short diaries about the candidates' comments on MoveOn's Virtual Town Hall on Iraq.

I'm writing this fast as each of the candidates speak, with quick reactions to each one. I hope others feel free to use the comments space for their own reactions. As a disclaimer, I'm an Obama leaner, but I also tend to like Edwards and some of the others a lot.

And on the Seventh Day: Obama

I'm going to post a series of short diaries about the candidates' comments on MoveOn's Virtual Town Hall on Iraq.

I'm writing this fast as each of the candidates speak, with quick reactions to each one. I hope others feel free to use the comments space for their own reactions. As a disclaimer, I'm an Obama leaner, but I also tend to like Edwards and some of the others a lot.

Penultimate: Dodd

I'm going to post a series of short diaries about the candidates' comments on MoveOn's Virtual Town Hall on Iraq.

I'm writing this fast as each of the candidates speak, with quick reactions to each one. I hope others feel free to use the comments space for their own reactions. As a disclaimer, I'm an Obama leaner, but I also tend to like Edwards and some of the others a lot.

After an intermission, here's Clinton:

I'm going to post a series of short diaries about the candidates' comments on MoveOn's Virtual Town Hall on Iraq.

I'm writing this fast as each of the candidates speak, with quick reactions to each one. I hope others feel free to use the comments space for their own reactions. As a disclaimer, I'm an Obama leaner, but I also tend to like Edwards and some of the others a lot.

Fourth up: Richardson