Lucky me.  I just happened to be watching CNN when they showed Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.) ranting on camera.  The subject of his ire was Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), who has been in Iraq, and has dared to question this nation's rush to war.

I can see why Lott is in a tizzy.  McDermott recalled Lyndon Johnson's disingenuous manufacturing of evidence in the Vietnam War, and suggested that Bush Junior might be playing the same games.  That's almost as bad as the Germans comparing Shrub to Hitler!  And it comes from one of this country's own legislators, which makes it even worse.

"You don't start out by putting the gun to their head and saying we're going to shoot you if you blink," said Rep. McDermott.  And: "It would not surprise me if they [Bush & Co.] came with some information that is not provable.  I think the president would mislead the American people."  More details are here.

Who is Jim McDermott?  I know little about him.  Very likely, he's just another politician trying to gain political points by taking a shrewdly calculated stance.  That doesn't automatically mean he's taking the wrong stance, however.  In this instance, he strikes me as being right on target.

Naturally, the War Party is furious.  And so, McDermott is in a whole Lott of trouble.  Here's part of what Truculent Trent said on CNN: "For him to be in Baghdad, the center of one of the most dangerous dictators in the world, with all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, to be questioning the veracity of our own American president, is the height of irresponsible.  He needs to come home and keep his mouth shut."

Nice try, Lott.  No, let me take that back: really lousy, pathetic excuse for a try.  You come off about as plausibly as Clinton did when he said, "I did not have sex with that woman."  But, where Clinton was/is a lying philanderer, you Republican chickenhawks are lying would-be World War III starters.  Oh, for the good old days, when the scandals were only about sex and the occasional aspirin factory in the Sudan!

Let's have a little lesson in civics, shall we, Mr. Lott?  This country was created in the flame of liberty, with an understanding of the vital importance of freedom of speech, especially in the political realm.  To tell someone who is adding to a very important debate, the results of which will have long-lasting and far-reaching consequences for good or evil, to "come home and keep your mouth shut," is, well, it's un-American.  It is the exact antithesis of the principles upon which this nation was founded. 

And to act outraged (as you also did on camera) at the very IDEA that Bush might be fibbing about anything is a real hoot.  You must think that Americans are really, REALLY stupid.

Here's another hoot: the irony of you saying that McDermott should leave "the center of one of the most dangerous dictators in the world, with all kinds of weapons of mass destruction."  Which country best fits that description, Iraq or the U.S.?  George W. Bush is THE most dangerous would-be dictator in the world, and has THE biggest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, and, unlike Saddam, has vowed to go on a binge of conquest outside his own nation's borders.

So, Mr. Lott, your rant was a complete oxymoron.  Which would be a good fit to the brainpower of the man who did the ranting.