Back in the run-up to our invasion of Iraq in 2002 and 2003 some columnists and writers never missed a chance to urge the United States to attack Iraq. Saddam, they told us, had weapons of mass destruction -- chemical and nuclear weapons, and he, somehow or another, was connected to September 11, 2001. The voices who challenged them were quickly drowned out and their patriotism challenged. A majority of these columnists/writers came from the right which couldn't wait for the United States to go "kick some Muslim ass" or words to that effect and a few were from the left -- for some reason they believed the Bush Administration's rhetoric. Leading the charge locally was Michael Myer who never questioned the evidence or judgment of the Bush Administration. (The only questioning that he ever did was of the patriotism of those who argued against a war with Iraq.)

Some liberal bloggers came to call these pro-war writers the keyboard commandos. Of course, these commandos were anxious to attack Iraq as long as it was someone else or their kids who would do the fighting - the keyboardists, after all, were too busy inflaming the populace. Despite a desperate need for debate, the United States plunged into a war that would prove incredibly costly in terms of lives, money and the future of the region.

At a certain point, some of the commandos admitted they had been wrong and a couple of major newspapers (most notably the New York Times and Washington Post) issued mea culpa's. However, no such acknowledgement was ever made by the local Ogden "newspapers."

Iraq never became that enlightened democracy that Bush and Cheney promised. Instead, the vacuum they created spawned leaders far worse and now the commandos are back urging us to once again take up the fight. (I don't usually watch them but I've noticed that the Sunday morning interview shows are regularly filled with them asking the questions -- how many times do they get to be wrong about Iraq and why are we listening to them?) Here in Wheeling, our leading keyboard commando, Michael Myer, tells us in his Sunday column what we need to do in order to win in Iraq:

To win - to protect us against the very real evil in the world - we need human beings willing to risk their lives on the battlefield.

Twelve years ago, Michael Myer's cheer-leading helped start the disastrous war which created the current radicals. (I'm sure if you asked him about it he'd somehow blame Obama.) He's never apologized and now he wants another war. Perhaps this time Myer could exchange his keyboard for a gun.