For the past several years, Greenwald has conducted a persistent, malicious campaign to distort who I am and where I stand. He is a mean-spirited, graceless bully. During that time, I have never seen him write a positive sentence about the US military, which has transformed itself dramatically for the better since Rumsfeld's departure (indeed, he ridiculed me when I reported that the situation in Anbar Province was turning around in 2007). I have never seen him acknowledge that the work of the clandestine service—performed disgracefully by the CIA during the early Bush years—is an absolute necessity in a world where terrorists have the capability to attack us at any time, in almost any place. Nor have I seen [him] acknowledge that such a threat exists, nor make a single positive suggestion about how to confront that threat in ways that might conform to his views. Therefore, I have seen no evidence that he cares one whit about the national security of the United States. It is not hyperbole, it is a fact.

I am not a religious reader of Greenwald--he does go on, and on--and it's possible that I missed extensive posts in which he praises the Armed Forces or makes positive suggestions about how to track possible communications between terrorists abroad and their confederates here. But I sort of doubt that. What I have seen from him, ad nauseum, are intemperate attacks in which he questions the character of--no, it's worse than that: he slimes--anyone who has the temerity to disagree with him.

The reading today is from the Book of Klein, chapter 73, beginning at the 13th verse:
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And there were those who muttered against Klein, for there was discontent in the Land of Bafflegab, and the Centrists were discomforted. And there arose a mighty man of valor, that was named Greenwald. And around him were acolytes, many and pathetic, and they did say many unkind things, even unto publishing alarmingly accurate reports of things said at picnics, which did mightily enrage Klein, so that the blood rushed to his head and the steam out of his ears. And Klein took up his word-processor to smite them. Vast was the word-processor, of sounding brass and luminous silicon, and the length of it was seven bull-sh*ts, and the width of it was three. And the prophet Hoekstra blessed Klein and anointed him with his own manly juicings, and Klein went forth to battle. And as he issued from the Gate of Broder, through which a camel may not fit, the face of Klein was terrible, and his chariots numberless as the secret WMD sites of Iraq. And Klein came down unto the Plain of Fisa, and confronted Greenwald, who was a stripling youth, armed only with a sling.....