Spot-on.

Here's a pair of forward-looking follow-up questions: (i) which, if any, of the likely GOP candidates for president -- McCain, Giuliani, and Romney -- seem willing & able to reverse this trend of delusional authoritarianism in the executive branch? and (ii) if the winner of the GOP nomination is not someone who is willing and able to do so, which of the potential Democratic nominees would you be willing to hold your nose & vote for instead?

(i) Paul
(ii) Richardson

Fair enough; but perhaps you'd consider answering the question with regard to candidates who have a whelk's chance in a supernova of winning the primaries?

As Mitt might say, the answers to your questions are defined by the null set.

Here is a bet you might be interested in.

If I may...

(i) Paul, Hagel
(ii) Richardson, Obama

I will weep for this nation if the choice came down to Clinton v Giuliani, the biggest authoritarians on either side.

I can understand not being willing to vote for Clinton, but I do think that reasonable anti-authoritarian conservatives should seriously think about Edwards, and definitely about Obama, as worth voting for to block the worst (and, alas, most likely) current GOP candidates from attaining the White House.

This Sullivan post is pretty relevant, I think:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/07/obama-and-conse.html#more

Hmm, the Tuwaitha comments disagree with a 2003 briefing on the subject:

"And Site Charlie, where radiological materials, principally yellow cake were stored, consists of three buildings, and they're surrounded by a fence and a wall of concrete barriers about 12 feet tall on three sides. According to reports from civilians in the area, on or about the 10th of March, Iraqi army forces who were guarding the site reportedly left their weapons -- some of their weapons with the local civilians -- and abandoned the site. We also believe, from talking to the local civilians, that on or about 20 March, the 20th of March, the civilians guarding the site abandoned it also. And, of course, we were conducting our attack across the Kuwaiti border on the 21st. On the 7th of April, U.S. Marines from our land component first arrived at Tuwaitha Site Charlie and assumed the security, and remained there until the 20th of April, when they turned over control of the facility to U.S. Army soldiers from another unit. And Tuwaitha Site Charlie has been secured and under the positive control of U.S. forces since the 7th of April. When the U.S. forces first arrived, they found the Tuwaitha site facility, Tuwaitha Charlie facility, in disarray. The front gate was open and unsecured, and the fence line and barrier wall on the back side of the facility had been breached. And the troops reported that there were no seals on the exterior doors of the buildings. But since taking control of Tuwaitha Site Charlie, no thieves or looters have been allowed inside the facility."


I find it odd that the Iraqi guards bugged out before the invasion started, but the military clearly said they did stop any further looting of the actual nuclear site at Tuwaitha once soldiers were present. Some of the discrepency in the accounts of looting on site might be due to the fact the entire facility covers 23,000 acres, and security was continously provided only at the nuclear storage site. So the claim that the Bush administration didn't protect the Tuwaitha WMD site is wrong.