Read it and smile:

To expand on the post below, all the supposed nefarious motives I've heard for this seem ridiculous on their face (sic).

The thought that Kerry needed Sandy Berger to pilfer one of Richard Clarke's after-reports about the millenium terror alerts to get whatever boilerplate he discussed at this particular press conference is truly ridiculous.

Let me get this straight: this guy

thinks these "nefarious motives" are "ridiculous on their face" (sic).

Let's check out some of Joshua Micah Cougar Mellancamp Marshall's recent claims. The ones he didn't find so "ridiculous on their face" (sic-- yeahp, I'm going to keep writing "sic" everytime I quote him).

Here, Joshua Cougar Mellancamp suggests, via his typical sarcastic (but not funny) cocksucker method, that the Pentagon's accidental destruction of hundreds of military records in the early nineties while transerring them from magnetic tape to computerized form was done deliberately in order to protect Bush from the AWOL charge.

Are the suggestions of such "nefarious motives" also "ridiculous on their face" (sic)? Apparently not.

I cannot, of course, catalogue his various claims that Bush deliberately lied about Iraq's WMD... an especially odd charge, given that if Bush knew he was "lying" about WMD, he also knew that his "lie" would be revealed to the world just in time for the 2004 election.

Kind of a strange lie. I could see lying before an election, with the idea of the lie being revealed after the election. But lying about such a matter knowing in advance it will be revealed as a lie well before your re-election?

"Ridiculous on their face" (sic)? Apparently not.

How about Halliburton? You all know the story-- Dick Cheney's payments from Halliburton were fixed in 2000; he cannot make more money, nor make less, no matter how Halliburton's business dealings pan out in the future.

And yet Dick Cheney, only because he's "friends" with Halliburton executives, decided to give them all a big juicy corrupt payoff despite the fact that he himself could not profit from the payoff.

Again, an odd sort of charge. An unlikely "favor" one would do for his "friends." But liberals of course believe all this bullshit, because liberals subscribe to the theory:

A friend will help you move.

A best friend will help you move a body.

But a Republican "friend" will help you secure a corrupt contract and then launch an illegal war based on a deliberately false pretext, resulting in thousands of deaths, in order to get you 5% more on your yearly bonus but without any chance of being personally bettered by the deal.

For the love of everything holy. I wish Republican "friends" could be counted on to do such favors. Do any of you think I'd be doing this bullshit if my "Republican friends" were willing to start illegal wars to help me?

Now-- are these claims of "nefarious motives" also "ridiculous on their face" (sic)?

Nope. Not ridiculous at all.

Bear in mind-- Josh Marshall is currently criticizing Republicans for sensationalizing this scandal in order to "distract" us all from substantive policy debates. We should be having substantive debate "on the issues," he whines; but this small-bore scandal, involving unproven charges against one (high-ranking) man, is "distracting" us from having that debate.

As they say: A whole bucketfull of irony spilled, and yet not one drop splattered on Josh Marshall.