4 quick comments:

1 - This excerpt doesn't make sense:

"Richard Cohen, has recently stated that the main reason he opposed the war was because he didn't want to throw his lot with the unserious, dirty hippies who opposed it."

Don't you mean that Cohen was FOR the war?

2 - It's Fred Hiatt, not Hyatt.

3 - You're right. Once again the pundits are devoting their attention to defending themselves and their political heroes and sponsors, rather than speaking to the substance of the issue at hand.

4 - As for the "surge" itself, while I suppose that a credible military case could be made for a short-term "surge" to stabilize certain sections of Iraq, such a "surge" would ultimately make no sense unless followed up by a much larger-scale operation, be it either a massive long-term escalation of our military presence in Iraq, or else a staged withdrawal, either of which this "surge" would presumably have set the stage for. And since there is no way that our military can do the former, and Bush has no intention of doing the latter, I think that Krugman's point was that anyone who still supports this "surge" knowing these realities is, therefore, either delusional, or cynical. I agree. I don't know which of these Kristol, Kagan, Keane, Lieberman, McCain, Graham et al are, but I'm inclined to believe that it's a lot more cynical than delusional than many people realize. These people may be crazy, but they're also quite evil, in their willingness if not eagerness to send yet more young men and women to die for their sins and help cover their asses, and I'm not willing to let them off the hook on the insanity defense alone.