Conservative intellectuals get thumped

Harold Meyerson, Washington Monthly, does us a service by rounding up the conservative intellectuals betrayal of intellect. The list, alas, is much much longer than this if we drop the "intellectual" qualifier.

The delusions for which they were apologizing weren't only the administration's; they were their own as well. There was an odd sort of integrity to their dishonesty; they believed (most of them did) all the theories that justified the war. But they didn't present these theories as theories. They presented them -- misrepresented them -- as facts.

Yet by some curious code of Beltway etiquette, the war hawks are still sought out for their judgments on war and peace, geopolitics, and military and political strategy. They are, in varying degrees, the journalistic equivalents of Donald Rumsfeld -- authors of disaster, spared from accountability, still bewilderingly in place. Herewith, five of the top offenders....