"He's flexible all right!" O'Brien counters. "He'll turn on a dime if it's politically expedient."
The two women are standing one Monday morning inside the National Air and Space Museum, beside an exhibit of Cold War nuclear missiles. Get it? They're arguing about a war while standing next to a Soviet SS-20 and an American Pershing II. They're here at the invitation of The Washington Post Magazine, because we wanted to see what happens when you pluck hostile bloggers from the ether and cause them to spend a day together, sightseeing and arguing in the nation's capital.
Now some of the passing tourists are slowing to eavesdrop on the debate. They hear O'Brien praise the patriotism of the thousands of antiwar marchers who gathered in Manhattan in 2003 on the eve of the Iraq invasion. They hear Newmark counter with a tribute to the patriotism of the troops who have fought the war.
They hear O'Brien claim that the Iraqi people "are not going to be liberated until we're gone . . ."
And Newmark parry: "We're still in Germany and Japan . . ."
And O'Brien respond: "But we're not occupying them . . ."
And Newmark demand: "Then what's the alternative?"
"I don't know!" says Barbara O'Brien. "And that's a damn shame . . . Each day we are weaker and weaker because our military is overstretched. . . . It's one of the great debacles of all time."
Point for counterpoint, zinger for stinger, tit for tat, the discussion escalates until Betsy Newmark once again mentions the dawning liberation of Lebanon from Syrian control. And Barbara O'Brien goes nuclear:
"We are to Iraq what Syria is to Lebanon," she says.
Newmark gasps, and for just a moment she is speechless. "That's a terrible thing to say!" she finally declares.
"That's how I see it," O'Brien says, matter-of-factly. And then she adds this breathtaking understatement: "That's where we differ."
