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This story and the overwhelming reaction to it are perfectly illustrative why logic needs to be taught in our schools, and specifically to emotional conservatives who cannot distinguish their legitimate complaints against liberals from the question of liberal veracity.

Just because a source happens to be a liberal source, does not mean it is wrong. The New Yorker is a liberal, sometimes disgustingly biased magazine. It also happens to be a serious and well written magazine. Conservatives have nothing like it, alas.

Not long before 9-11, the New Yorker published two articles which were brilliantly written and memorable, altho I have thrown out my copies and cannot recount them exactly. But the gist of the first one was, the brutality and hypocrisy of Islamic clerics. The second one was, how Clinton refused to act on unquestionable information regarding the death of our soldiers at Khobar; that article pretty much called him a coward and a liar.

Free Republic conservatives constantly reflect a shallowness which makes conservatism look ridiculous. Why do you think that both Drudge and Rush have dissed you, and foresaken you? Because they are liberals? Or because they are rational?

I admire Jim Robinson, and am in awe of him. He has done something I could never dream of doing. But the constant ass-kissing of him, and his apparent acceptance of it, degrades this site and makes it look cult-like. If that is what this site is about, so be it, but then it is not about conservatism.

For conservatives to question the good faith of Seymour Hersh for saying our special forces were scared, or some were injured, demonstrates the shallowness of those conservatives. Have they ever been scared before? I see no inconsistency with bravery, courage, duty, honor, and being scared. Nor do I think it out of the realm of possibility that some of our soldiers have been injured by the enemy.

Hersh may be wrong. But if I were a 22 year old special forces soldier, I would not be insulted if someone suggested I was scared. Nor would I consider it un-American.

This website has seen many people driven away from here, because ridicule and imputations of bad faith were freely thrown. This website has had the potential to be extraordinarily influential ... but many many folks, supposed conservatives, seem more interested in pulling out their FR credentials and tinning their way to satisfaction.

Right on - word out of my own mouth. I like to think that Conservatism embodies the legal basis of our constitution, some of the teachings of Christ and otherwise can stand on a basis of fact and rational argument. That is what ought to separate it from Liberalism. But no, we have conservatives stealing the illogic of the Liberals and using it for their side - and don't say our side, because illogic is a poor weapon and often injures its user worse than its target.

The problem of our top leadership not knowing how to use special or irregular forces has a long history. If this article is true, Franks is far from the first.

Furthermore, I don't know how it aids and abets the enemy to let him know that we know that operation x was a f'up - which, were it, he knows already - and therefore we are likely not to do it a second time - unless we are, in which case I hope everyone knows so that maybe we can put an end to the stupidity.

Finally, I am amazed at the arm-chair bravado of those here who think that they wouldn't be scared under fire - or that SF's are superhero's who do not feel fear when under fire. Fear is part of the wiring of the primitive wiring of the human (or animal) brain to help self preservation. The only one's who don't feel fear are destined to win the Darwin Award.