Letters to the Editor
buzzdainer
Published Letters: 7
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BDS=BS
[Read the article: Bush's 2001 condemnation of Russia's human rights abuses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Or... as is the case here, one can hate our political leaders no matter what they do."
If you actually think this, you couldn't possibly be reading and understanding Glenn's posts, nor could you be reading the comments for actual content.
If George W. Bush hadn't lied us into a costly and disastrous war, if he hadn't repeatedly ignored the law and violated the U.S. Constitution, if he hadn't cut taxes for the rich while driving the country into massive debt, if he hadn't declared war on the environment, and if he hadn't tried to use the Justice Department for partisan political purposes, I can guarantee you that Bush's approval ratings would be higher. People have very good reasons for opposing the Bush administration's policies, and not one of them has to do with conservatives' pet acronym.
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So, the administration's defense
[Read the article: The leak designed to save Alberto Gonzales]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]of Gonzales is not only questionable, but predicated on the notion that there were objections not only to the warrantless wiretapping program, but also to its data mining program. It's a sad day when conservatives are crowing endlessly about how wonderful it is that people in the intelligence community were forcefully protesting the administration's activities. Their blind loyalty to any high-ranking Bush official has been extremely damaging to this country.
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I completely agree
[Read the article: Col. Boylan's denial]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]with Glenn that this is a matter worth pursuing. There are only two possibilities here, and they are both serious:
(1) The spokesperson for the military's supreme commanding officer in Iraq is sending juvenile, politicized, and wildly inaccurate e-mails to bloggers and journalists in an apparent effort to intimidate them.
(2) Someone has hacked into the computer of aforementioned spokesman, which poses a security threat of the most serious kind.
In either case, this matter deserves the immediate attention not only of Glenn Greenwald, who is at the center of this situation, but also the U.S. military. I think this should be pursued either until Boylan comes clean, or until a thorough investigation has been conducted and the results made public.
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I'm not so sure I agree
[Read the article: Col. Boylan's implosion accelerates]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]with Glenn's comment, "My goal is not to have [Boylan] fired, or disciplined or anything else" because that would amount to going on some sort of "scalp hunt."
I'm a university professor, and I have high professional standards for myself and for others in my profession. I work very hard to be professional in all my interactions with students, other faculty, staff, and administrators. If I failed to meet that standard in an egregious way--spouting blatantly partisan misinformation during class, let's say, or attempting to intimidate other faculty members by sending them unsolicited, aggressive emails--I would expect the matter to be investigated, and I would probably face some pretty tough questioning from my department chair. I could expect a difficult road if I ever applied for tenure, and if my actions were sufficiently unprofessional, I could expect to lose my job. For this I am glad. I want to work with others who take their professional responsibilities as seriously as I do.
Shouldn't the top spokesman for the supreme commander of U.S. forces in Iraq be held to an even higher standard? Is it unreasonable to think that, if Col. Boylan did indeed send the "fake" e-mails, that someone else would do his job better than he does? Doesn't Col. Boylan work for me and for every other American taxpayer, and don't we have a duty to demand high standards of behavior for people in positions of great responsibility?
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According to the Telegraph
[Read the article: Petraeus named second most influential "conservative"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]David Petraeus is a conservative, and Michael O'Hanlon is a liberal. While I'm willing to believe the former, I'm highly skeptical of the latter.
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I'm in agreement
[Read the article: Barack Obama: "Committed Christian -- Called to Bring Change"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]with those who argue that the Obama campaign's primary purpose here is to rebut the false claim that Obama is a Muslim. The reason why this kind of rhetoric is necessary should be self-evident: Obama will lose in South Carolina--as he did in New Hampshire and Nevada--if he is perceived as "not like us," which is what the Obama-is-a-Muslim smear campaign was designed to do. While I agree with Glenn's larger point--that American politics would be healthier if candidates didn't tout their faith in a Presidential campaign as a reason why anyone should vote for them--who's going to be the first candidate to take a stand? It certainly hasn't been Ron Paul, whom Glenn very much admires; you should see the e-mail I received recently from someone associated with the Paul campaign here in Nevada, explaining that I should vote for Paul because of his religious views. Which candidate has refused to discuss religion as a campaign issue? I can't think of a single one. Thus, I don't see anything extraordinary about what Obama has done in South Carolina.
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Glenn, reading your post
[Read the article: A week of petty though typical attacks on Obama produced nothing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]reminds me of what I, along with many supporters of John Kerry, believed in 2004. We believed that Kerry would be less susceptible to predictable GOP attacks on his character and his patriotism tan, say, Howard Dean because of his status as a war hero and longtime member of the Senate. The opposite was true--the GOP (and the enabling media) were able to completely turn that narrative around and transformed Kerry into a military-hating, Jane Fonda-worshipping, injury-faking commie.
They will try to do the same to Obama. They will go after his strengths and try to transform them into weaknesses. They will try to control the narrative. They will try to drive Obama's approval rating so low that Americans will believe that they have no choice but to vote for a medicore candidate like McCain to prevent a Che-loving, terrorist-sympathizing, America-hating, Hitleresque psycho like Obama from ever sniffing the Oval Office. I think it's possible that this strategy will backfire, but I'm not confident about it--it will take every ounce of our collective effort to keep the GOP from controlling the narrative.