Atlantic Monthly Crashed-and-Burned-and-Smoking Watch (Marc Ambinder)

Marc Ambinder is now a national joke:

Don't Cry For Tom Ridge - The Atlantic Politics Channel: Journalists, including myself, were very skeptical when anti-Bush liberals insisted that what Ridge now says is true, was true. We were wrong. Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence.... Information asymmetry is always going to exist, and, living as we do in a Democratic system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt. We can see, now, how pre-war intelligence was manipulated, how the entire Washington establishment (including Congressional Democrats(, including the media, was manipulated by a valid fear of the unknown--but a fear we now know was consciously, deliberately, inculcated...

So he was right to be wrong and those who were right were wrong to be right and the fact that the Bush campaign had lied like a rug from day one was irrelevant toward judging the credibility of the same people once they were in office.

The failure to even try to learn from one's own experience is breathtaking--and contemptible.

If there is an Atlantic Monthly in a decade, it will be because it develops a reputation as a good filter, promoting smart reality-based people who understand issues and want to inform the public.

Publishing the likes of Marc Ambinder really isn't helping at all.