Absolute Disasters of Human Beings

I don't want to wade too deeply into this, but the conservative blogosphere is made up of some pretty horrible people. Case in point, their recent all-out assault on a US soldier serving in Iraq (see madness: here*; see coverage: here here here here). In a nutshell, here is what happened:

1. Using a pseudonym, the soldier writes a story for The New Republic (TNR) detailing some rather disturbing behavior on the part of himself and fellow soldiers in Iraq.
2. Nutcases on the right, declare that because we don't know his name- the story is made up and demand that TNR apologize for making things up.
3. The soldier who wrote it comes forward to let the right wing know that he does, indeed, exist.
4. Nutcases on the right, from the safety of their parents' basements, personally attack the soldier going as far as to post pictures of him on their blogs and threaten him with physical harm.

My one thought in reading all of this is, who on God's green Earth behaves this way? These aren't some isolated crackpots who are doing this, these are people who guest host for Bill O'Reilly, appear on CNN and write for major American newspapers. Yet, when faced with the fact that they were 100% wrong, they don't kindly apologize and then decide to shut the F-up. Instead, they act like a pack of wild dogs who just got a taste of blood. As Digby notes, the fact that war makes soldiers do things which are morally questionable or downright wrong, is not a secret. But in listening to the right wing on this, you would think that war is all gumdrop bullets and lollipop IEDs.

*I don't often check out Malkin's blog, but doesn't it seem that she is coming unhinged? It is like reading something written by someone suffering from schizophrenia. It is both rambling and random, visually disorganized and is filled with paranoid delusions.