It is amazing to me that garbage like this can pass muster, even at the San Francisco Chronicle. In this piece, one Harley Sorenson argues that "Deserters are heroes," as the piece is titled.

Not only is his point absurd, a lot of the column is actually factually inaccurate. In fact, he declares:

"[T]he Iraqis are evil, Mr. Bush asserted. Well, at least their leader was, so, by extension, they all were."

Where has this bozo been? One of the primary reasons for liberating Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was oppressing the people of Iraq. President Bush never claimed that Iraqi people were evil -- in fact, he argued just the opposite.

If this is the best the left can do these days, no wonder Michael Moore is a celebrity. The piece is ripe with the moral equivalence that characterizes leftist "thought" these days -- Soresnson equates Iraq possession of WMD's with the United States'. And he implicitly compares the Bush Administration to Hitler, equating the thinking of the deserters he praises with those who learned the lessons of Nuremberg; namely, that it's no defense just to claim that one was "following orders."

It's shocking to see such silly, picayune reasoning being honored with a column in a major newspaper. No wonder a person of intellectual depth like Christopher Hitchens is having such severe second thoughts about his erstwhile compatriots.