Jonathan Cohn defends his colleague Jonathan Chait’s attack on Bill Kristol. I said that Chait was making too much of two sentences Kristol had written. Cohn points out that Kristol has made similar comments several times before. What Chait and Cohn object to, according to the latter, is Kristol’s habit of saying that opponents of the war do not support the troops.

If Chait had stuck to that argument, he would have had a stronger piece. But he didn’t. He also used those sentences, and another one, to make the case that Kristol doesn’t care about the truth, says things he knows are untrue, etc. He didn’t come close to making that case.