Glenn Greenwald in Salon

Obviously, the job performance and capabilities of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Senior Commander in a war are necessary topics for discussion. They're not holy religious figures. Their job performance -- which is what Reid addressed -- is just as legitimate a source of criticism as any other government official. And it isn't exactly scandalous to call into question the capabilities of those who have authored the greatest military disaster in our country's history.

But beyond that obvious point, the spectacle of George Bush's press secretary lamenting attacks on military officers is just laughable. The President was re-elected following a political convention where his followers mocked John Kerry's purple hearts by waiving around band-aids. And decorated war veterans from John Murtha to Max Cleland to Wes Clark have seen their character and integrity -- not their mere competence -- publicly mauled by the President's political movement.

And more specifically still, the President's most vocal neoconservative war supporters have spent the last several years trying to shield themselves from blame for the Iraq disaster they unleashed by heaping all the blame on the incompetence of Generals Casey and Abizaid. In fact, the reason we have a General Petraeus is because war supporters blamed the problems in Iraq on the prior military leadership. Indeed, it became an Article of Faith among neoconservative adherents that their Brilliant Iraq Vision was marred by incompetent military leadership.

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