Hey, David Brooks! Are poor judgment, poor forecasting, and a poor relationship with the truth good reasons to oppose Joe Lieberman’s re-election? Here’s what Joe said back in November:

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood–unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical… The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

Here’s what the AP reports today:

Masked Shiite gunmen stopped cars in western Baghdad Sunday and grabbed people off the streets, singling out the Sunni Arabs among them and killing at least 37, police said…

Police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said 37 bodies were taken to hospitals and police were searching for more victims reportedly left dumped in the streets. He also said U.S. and Iraqi forces had sealed off the area.

Deputy Prime Minister Salam Zikam Ali al-Zubaie, a Sunni, called the attack ”a real and ugly massacre.”

He blamed Iraqi security forces that are widely believed to have been infiltrated by Shiite militia…

An Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said Shiite militiamen wearing masks and black uniforms were roaming the neighborhood, checking people’s identity cards, presumably for Sunni names. ”They are killing civilians according to their identity cards,” he said.

Clashes also broke out in northwestern Baghdad between U.S. forces and members of the Mahdi army, the militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Three militia members were killed, police said. The U.S. military had no immediate comment.

In other violence Sunday, gunmen killed an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, one of several deadly shootings targeting security forces…

..Gunmen also opened fire on a foot patrol in eastern Baghdad, killing a policeman, police said. Another policeman was killed in a drive-by shooting in the northern city of Kirkuk.

A funeral was held Sunday for a former senior Baath Party official and his 5-year-old granddaughter. Both were gunned down Saturday night while driving in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, police said.

A mortar round hit a home in another area in Dora, wounding three children.

In other violence Saturday, gunmen on a motorcycle shot to death two men who were security officers during Saddam Hussein’s regime as they were walking in separate locations of Karbala, police said.

Rather than doing further excerpts from Lieberman’s November editorial, I request that David Brooks read the whole thing. If he still thinks Lieberman should be re-elected, or that anyone that opposes him is from “the highly educated, highly affluent, highly Caucasian wing of the Democratic Party [that] has turned liberalism from a philosophy into a secular religion, and then sought to purge a battle-scarred warhorse on the grounds of insufficient moral purity”, then David Brooks is every bit as stupid as I think he is.