Isn't 'shroomville seeming kind of marginal these days? The Freepers and the Murdoch media may be waxing vengeful - the NY Post had a "WMD" headline on that stinking sarin shell - but it's not really taking off in the mainstream, where the sarin story was a dud and new abuse stories surface daily. As I recall, when the New Yorker turned against the Vietnam war it was a sign that elite opinion was shifting - but that was like 1969 or 1970, years into the disaster. Hersh had a hard time selling the My Lai story. Now you've got Hersh pumping out horror stories in every week's NYer. Am I being too optimistic?
=================
There are still many hard core believers who turn every bit of bad news into a jujitsu flipped confirmation of the righteousness of whatever utterance issues forth from Team Bush.
Even so, if the blogsphere is any indication (and it counts for something I suppose) the believers' offensive has been seriously countered -- it's no longer possible to shout "9/11! 9/11! 9/11!" repeatedly to cower your opponents into quiet submission. Now, when they yell "9/11!" the counter-shout is "dumb-ass!" as in, "hey dumbass, your war isn't helping, in fact, it's hurting things and if you can't see that, you're worthless!"
The comfy chair warriors are stuck with formulas -- we're bringing democracy, better to fight "The Terrorists" (soon to be an exciting, summer film) on their home turf rather than in Topeka, Kansas, Saddam had "weapons related programs" and was a global threat -- and so on and so forth.
Their debating adversaries however, have reports (updated almost daily) of deception, ineptitude, cruelty and corporate graft -- a devastating quiver of arrows -- and can deftly parry each thrust with nearly real-time assesments of how far things are from the warriors' rosy vision.
Perhaps most devastating of all to the war bloggers and allied trades people has been the increasingly loud sound of bona fide conservatives and unapologetic imperialists slapping Team Bush upon the buttocks for its many, many failures. When you quote a Pat Buchanan a Brent Scrowcroft or a Zbigniew Brezinski, it's damn near impossible for folks to paint them as latte lovin libruls.
And Hersh? He's like the hammer of Thor delivering the smack down to Surtur, a one man multiple targeted missile -- at the rate he's going there'll be grounds for tossing almost the entire senior staff of the US government into the slammer (not going to happen but the evidence will be available nonetheless).
The 'shroomers' can still make a lot of noise, but their shouting is sounding, as you say, more and more marginal with each pasing day.
.d.