At least Lawrence O'Donnell had the stones the other day to tell everyone watching MSNBC that none of the blabbing-head cable-snooze readers and insta-pundits, himself included, had actually gone there and done that.

As O'Donnell pointed out, virtually no one now holding forth about how the Army should have done this and the Defense Department should have done that and we never should have gone into Iraq (well, *duh*) and yadda yadda yadda have ever found their gratuitously-pontificating selves in the line of fire.

Vietnam, Gulf War 1.0, even friggin' Granada -- they ain't been there and they for damn sure ain't done that.

(And, for the record, neither was and neither did I. I make no bones about it. The only guy who ever shot at me wasn't wearing a uniform at the time, and neither was I. But that's neither here nor there.)

And it really chaps my asterisk to hear all of these pompous idiots opining about what we should be doing now that it's finally (finally?) become clear that the Shrubya administration's illegal war of pre-emptive aggressive conquest in Iraq is, well, a rapidly degenerating debacle stemming from a totally badly-botched boink-up. (Well, *duh*.)

Meanwhile there's at least one voice out there in the wilderness who's been saying all along the same damn thing that all these johnnies- and janies-come-lately are finally finding the nerve to say in public now that a certain Mr. Rove has been sent to the woodshed for the time being.

Who? That guy? You mean the one who can't tell a joke?

Yeah. Him.

Unlike virtually every other dog in the fight with the exception of John "Abel" McCain -- and with the glaring exceptions of the current pResident, his veep, and his secretary of defense -- that guy who can't tell a joke has in fact been there and has in fact done that. And what everybody's saying now is the same thing that this guy who can't tell a joke has been saying for years.

To wit, this from a speech that guy gave in September 2006, full details here:

This is the reality of the world today -- a world more dangerous because of the Bush blunders and a challenge far more complicated than the gruff Cheney sound bites. America deserves -- our safety depends--on a winning strategy to reverse this dangerous course and make our country more secure.

There are five principal priorities that demand immediate action: (1) redeploy from Iraq, (2) re-commit to Afghanistan, (3) reduce our dependence on foreign oil, (4) reinforce our homeland defense, and (5) restore America's moral leadership in the world. These "5 R's"--if you want to call them that-- are bold steps Democrats will take to strengthen our national security, and that the Republicans who have set the agenda today resist to our national peril.

And as the same guy who can't tell a joke said in October of 2005, full details here:

[T]he mistakes of the past, no matter who made them, are no justification for marching ahead into a future of miscalculations and misjudgments and the loss of American lives with no end in sight. We each have a responsibility, to our country and our conscience, to be honest about where we should go from here. It is time for those of us who believe in a better course to say so plainly and unequivocally.

[...]

The path forward will not be easy. The administration’s incompetence and unwillingness to listen has made the task that much harder, and reduced what we can expect to accomplish. But there is a way forward that gives us the best chance both to salvage a difficult situation in Iraq, and to save American and Iraqi lives. With so much at stake, we must follow it.

We must begin by acknowledging that our options in Iraq today are not what they should be, or could have been.

And you know what, though? The *real* reason that I still pay attention to what that guy who can't tell a joke says now is all because of something the same guy said thirty-five years ago -- full details here:

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.

I was a lot younger then than I am today. But those words have stuck with me through the intervening decades. And, quite frankly, I wouldn't be the ardently-peacemongering pinkie-hippo bleeding-heart librul that I am now had it not been for what that guy and those like him said way back when.

Take *that*, Tucker Carlson.