I read the first page but.... 4 more? Cut to the chase: what was the flame war about?

Johnson’s response, in thousands of cases, was to block their accounts and ban some of them from viewing the blog. “Get off my Web site” was a common farewell.

That's a man who's not given to half-measures.

Libertarian war blogger finds all his net buddies are fascists, racists and/or insane. Has weird epiphany when he leaves the house for the first time in seven years.

Could have been worse. He might have had his epiphany after seeing Avatar.

PS. He still doesn't have a life or a clue.

Libertarian war blogger finds all his net buddies are fascists, racists and/or insane.

I'm shocked, shocked.

People who have pledged their lives to fighting Islamic extremism, when asked about Charles Johnson now, unsheathe a word they do not throw around lightly: “evil.”

They don't throw that word around lightly? Oh, allow me to retort.

How did he not notice for all that time that people like Pam Geller were completely fucking nuts?

I was probably one of the first ones to make a connection with Osama bin Laden, who’d declared war on America a few years earlier.

What an ego. He might deserve credit for blogging about the connection and researching things further, but everyone made the connection. At least, everyone who remembered the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the subsequent investigation that revealed the outlines of Al Qaeda and bin Laden as a character of interest. The morning of 9/11, while it was still happening, I remember my dad saying "bin Laden" when I caught up with him on the phone. It seemed pretty obvious. If it occurred to this blogger, it occurred to countless thousands of other people, especially those in and around New York, at exactly the same time.


It's sort of an interesting story, if only because it really does raise so many questions about his actions and decisions. He, of course, MUST have noticed that these people were nuts. He gave them free rein to pour invective all over his website for years.

He's portrayed as someone who's mellowed and thoughtful, who's chagrined at the lack of civility in the world. Yet he's done some ruthless things to avenge himself against people who started denouncing them (outing his anon users with names and photos, for one), and for years, he let his web community post any kind of vile, hateful poison they wanted to. People sometimes do change in deep ways as they age, and there might be some of that here, but the person tsk-tsking at the other nutbars for their anger and distance from reality is the same one who's spent a decade turning a firehose of vitriol on the world. He's been part of the problem. It's hard to allow him much moral high ground, and he seems to think he can just flip the switch and none of that should matter any more. I see some signs of personal regret, but not repentance or a recognition of a need for forgiveness, if you know what I mean.

He still has the personality of a wingnut. He's just switched wings.

Not wings, just labels.

FWIW, there was no connection between AQ and the 1993 WTC bombing in 1993. One of the bombers, Ramzi Yousef, later cozied up to AQ, but at the time of the WTC bombing there were two factions among the Egyptians and the faction that later aligned with AQ was killing some of the people involved in the WTC bombing and the shooting of Meir Kahane.

Johnson just followed the crowd of neo-cons on that issue. They were wrong about it then and they are more wrong about it now.

The fact that the writer at the NYT couldn't get it straight is just more blowback from the neo-con takeover of the anti-terrorism studies community and post-9/11 purge of most of the people who had any sense (and opposed the invasion of Iraq.)

It was more important to forge fake ties between 9/11, the anthrax attacks and Iraq to justify the invasion. The press, the political establishment and damn near everybody fell for it. Johnson was one of the cheerleaders and just a nitwit and a tool.

So this whole sick story is still not covered properly. The maudlin sideshow with this loon and his little green footballs is a continuation of a false history, not a revision.

Yes, I'm bitter about it. We knew the anthrax attacks were done by US right-wingers within weeks of the second wave of murders (i.e. as soon as the strain was identified.) The Monterrey Institute even issued a report to that effect, but by then it was too late. Dave Neiwert and I had enough of the story to take it to Salon in November 2001, but the conclusion that the attack came from within the US biowarfare community was "radioactive" according to the editors who spiked the story.

OK, I'm done, venting over.

Warbaby, I wish you'd send that comment to the NYT as a letter to the editor. Seriously.

FWIW, there was no connection between AQ and the 1993 WTC bombing in 1993. One of the bombers, Ramzi Yousef, later cozied up to AQ...

Yes, I'm aware of that. If you read my comment, notice that I'm not saying the ties were discovered at the time of the 1993 bombing. However, the lengthy investigation and trial process that followed was well covered in the New York times and other area press, and over the ensuing years, bin Laden's network became known to everybody following the story. It was the logical assumption the moment the towers were hit on 9/11, nine years later - not some astounding detective work on this blogger's part. For instance, a Google News search readily returns results like this (from 1998): US Sees Brooklyn Link to World Terror Network

The accused bomber told prosecutors that he had twice turned to a Texas acquaintance named Wadih el Hage to buy weapons for his Brooklyn associates. Last month, Mr. el Hage was arrested on charges of being part of the Osama bin Laden terror network that is suspected of the bombing of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7....Indeed, the Government recently asserted for the first time that the roots of Mr. bin Laden's organization could be traced, in part, to a sparsely furnished office on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn that was called Alkifah Refugee Center and had for many years been a gathering place for that same fringe group of terrorists.... in the Government's version so far, Mr. bin Laden's far-flung network is presented as a tapestry of personal relationships between men of different nationalities and backgrounds who share his determination to rid the Islamic world of American influence.

My point is just that this blogger didn't offer any special insight in looking right at bin Laden the day the towers fell.