When I was a freshman in college (Fall 2002), I took the required public communication class. In it, I had to do a persuasive presentation about a subject of my choosing. I chose the Iraq war. I had a few modest, not particularly fleshed out arguments: WMDs (if they were even in Iraq) weren’t particularly dangerous to us in Saddam’s hands, links to al Qaeda were spurious and contrary to what bin Laden had said, and something about the no-fly zones in Iraq. It wasn’t an impressive presentation and I was out-argued by other members of the class after the presentation was over. It was an embarrassing experience for a long time. Later, I learned more, thought out those arguments and was able to answer the objections raised in that class (in my own head, anyway).

That experience has, as far as I can tell, made me somewhat neurotic in (online) political debates. Rarely do I let anyone else have the last word and I tend to chop up comments and respond to individual points fairly thoroughly (some of this has been tempered in discussions on blogs). Sometimes it’s a good thing, other times it’s overkill.

I only say this because I think it’s sort of interesting and to point out that if some upcoming posts strike you as oddly timed, something akin to that reaction is probably the cause. So in the following week or two you’ll likely see a more thorough description of why I think we went to war with Iraq and a discussion of the Democratic candidates, starting with Dennis Kucinich and continuing until I get bored.