Here comes Deborah Howell of the Washington Post to stick up for anti-military “analyst” William Arkin: A Blog’s Blast Damage.

It’s exactly what you probably expect; she minimizes Arkin’s statements, narrowly focusing on the “mercenary” part, and glosses over his radical leftist past and history of working for Greenpeace and Human Rights Watch; instead she mentions unnamed “human rights and environmental groups.”

To Howell, this is just another example of the superiority of mainstream media to blogs. Arkin didn’t have an editor, because this was only a blog, and the Washington Post doesn’t really care what goes on in blogs. And of course, the blog audience is composed of thick-headed literalists, unable to grasp the fine nuance of people like William Arkin.

Readers usually take things literally. And an editor should have told him to take out the word. That’s what editors are for: They keep opinion writers from making fools of themselves.

See, if Arkin’s hate screed had been edited, no one would have known that the Post’s “military analyst” was a hard left anti-military moonbat. The editor would have come in and sanitized it, and no one would have been the wiser.

Howell has actually made a case against having an editor.