What Really Frightens the Reality-Challenged Community?

Just the facts, ma'am.

This is certainly something I experience frequently with Lefties: they can't argue rationally. Everything's emotional.

For example:

Lefty: The War in Iraq's the biggest military disaster in history.
Me: Really? Bigger than the Charge of the Light Brigade? Bigger than Napoleon's retreat from Russia? Bigger than Roman legion massacred in the Teutonic forest?
Lefty: The biggest in history.
Me: More like the single greatest military success in history. We conquered a significant power on their home territory so fast they dissolved in place. Hannibal's double envelopment at Cannae isn't even comparable in the sense that we did it without even slaughtering the enemy. Our biggest problem is actually that we beat the Iraqis so quickly and easily that they didn't suffer enough to get tired of warfare.
Lefty: It's a civil war. You can't win a civil war.
Me: Yes you can. We won ours, for example. To have a civil war you must have two parties vying for power with established armies. There's no such thing in Iraq.
Lefty: What? What are all those bombs going off then?
Me: Confirmation there is no civil war. If there were a civil war, the fighting would be conventional. It's not. It's an insurgency, meaning that foreign governments like Iran and Syria are sending in troops to foment a popular uprising. First comes insurgency, then guerrila warfare, then conventional warfare. The last stage is war or civil war depending on whether there is a large scale uprising among native Iraqis.
Lefty: Bushitler! Halliburton! Chickenhawk!

It's always the same. You present facts and arguments, they toss out non sequiturs and namecalling.

Liberal arguments these days look something like this:

A: Iraq is a catastrophe
B: Bushitler! Cheney! Halliburton!

They don't even bother to appear rational most of the time, chiefly because their devotion to leftism isn't rational, but purely emotional. That's their tribe, and no amount of argument will take them away from their tribe.