Since you been gone, I can breathe for the first time

Why are you making Snuffy cry,
Frank

Since you been gone, I can breathe for the first time

Hey, Frank, great editing, buddy. You really are a credit to the magazine, and I'm a total dick. Here's what you let Bob Kagan write for you this week:

Some claim that we don't have 50,000 troops to send to Iraq. In fact, the troops are available. Sending additional forces to Iraq means lengthening troop rotations, as the United States has done in previous major conflicts. Sustaining such an increased deployment, however, will require a substantial increase in the overall size of the Army and Marines. This increase, which does not require a draft but does require money, is necessary regardless of what we do in Iraq. It is stunning that this administration has attempted to fight two wars and has envisioned other possible interventions with a force clearly inadequate for these global commitments.

And here's what he wrote with Bill Kristol this very week:

Those who claim that it is impossible to send 50,000 more troops to Iraq, because the troops don't exist, are wrong. The troops do exist. But it is also true that the Army and Marines are stretched, and that this new deployment needs to be accompanied by rapid steps to increase the overall size of American ground forces. For six years, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld refused to acknowledge that his vision of the American military of the future did not match the present reality of American military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world. We trust the new secretary of defense will understand the necessity of dealing urgently with the manpower crisis in our military.

Hey, I didn't know you wanted to turn TNR into a Weekly Standard clip service. You're totally up there with Kinsley and Hertzberg!

Frank, first of all Bob Kagan is talking out of his ass. Technically, yes there are 50K more troops to send, if you gut the national guard. But when half of California burns down, that might be seen to be a bad idea.

But the problem, Frank, is that Mr. Ackerman seems to feel he was treated unfairly when he was fired, and well, seems to want to make a point of it. I know, with the fine tradition of Stephen Glass and Ruth Shalit behind you, his insubordination and honesty was just too much to accept for you

Did he really threaten you? Come on Frank, you've sat in Ibrox during a Rangers-Celtic game, gone across the water with their fans, you even ran around Serbia asking questions about Arkan, and now you're worried about Spencer Ackerman? It's not like he showed up to work wearing a Celtic jersey and singing Fuck the Queen, is it? Not like he spends his weekends with the boys ambushing the SAS, right?

You spent all that time with the hard men, and Ackerman was some kind of threat? Please.

Now look at the mess you have. Zengerle still writes, long after publishing lies, lies you defended, and the honest Spencer Ackerman is now sniping at you like Vasili Zaitzev. It seems he's got a bit of a grudge there.

Oh, and you still have Lee Siegel on your masthead? Why? He's got honesty issue and it was only because young Ezra Klein didn't pick up a bat and humiliate him earlier, did he keep his job for so long. I mean, he called a man a pedophile in print with no evidence. So how did that session with the lawyers go? It must have been taxing.

I know there are days you walk past Borders, see your brother's books in paperback, and you wonder why you couldn't have been as gifted. But you aren't, and now you must dodge the sling and arrows of the aggreived Ackerman.

Shameful, really.