Letters to the Editor
Ijon Tichy
Published Letters: 452 Editor's Choice: 69
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All about the Benjamins?
[Read the article: If it's about the money, there's a place to find more]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sooo its Mark Foley in a landslide?
Santorum reelected?
House Speaker Tom Delay?
Maybe 2002 and 2004 had more to do with the terrorist elephant in the house than dollars and sense, or lack thereof.
I wonder, who had more moolah in 1994, the incumbent Dems or their GOP challengers? That year, more than 2002 or 2004 may be a better bellweather.
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Blame game
[Read the article: "Stay the course"? Who said anything about "staying the course"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is very likely the Operation Iraqi Freedom, a lie from the get go, will turn into Operation Blame Someone Other than US.
It may be that Bush and company, draft dodgers by any other name, will blame their 'good soldiers. They may well take advantage of these general's Powell like obedience to civil authority to tow the company line to set them up for this type of scapegoating. We likely won't see the rightwing anti-Powell books until after a Dem is elected president but they are coming and the rest of the generals will be unindicted co-conspirators to this desparate attempt to salvage the "we were right, we just got sabotaged by a vast left wing conspiracy led by the generals," type of argument.
These books and these arguments will be like eight track tapes were to the move from LPs to CDs; a brief distraction to keep the issue focused until the better excuse rears its head once again.
Blame the media.
Everything we write, everything we hear, everything we see on TV will be recorded, mixed, remixed and eventually used in soundbites to support the argument that it is really the media that lost the war in Iraq by harping on the bad, failing to report the good (because they were cowards who wouldn't leave the comforts of their airconditioned Caligula like life in the green zone to see the efforts of dedicated Iraqis working to build democracy) and disrespecting our troops by their morbid fascination with counting the dead while dismissing the living fighting soldiers with their typical elitist snobism against the hard working class patriotic soldiers who so fought and died for their right to drink Starbucks, eat tofu, drive Volvos and denigrate their very sacrifice.
This is the 'war' yet to come.
What it must not be recognized is as a war that was a fiasco, prosecuted as a reckless adventure by arrogant fools, drunk on the self delusion they were pursuing a righteous ideal, blinded in the belief superpower means omnipotence, and goaded on by there well dressed, high papered, but greed driven frat boy friends in industries dominated by Haliburton, Bank of America and Exxon Mobil.
This is history in the making and it is, in many ways, the history of 'boys with toys,' and their pursuit of their personal dreams of glory at the expense of the rest of us, be they political or philosophical ideals, acquisition of resources, or the senseless game of exploitation of military personal or material.
Sadly, this will not be the way it will be written, at least by anyone who is not marginalized by the media smarting for being blamed for losing wars and being unpatriotic and, in commie speak, 'an enemy of the state.'
Instead, more palatable excuses will be created by future talking heads. As John Ford directed in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, (paraphrased) "When the truth is harder to accept than the myth, print the myth."
The blame may well start with the military, but it will not linger there for long. The military is a necessary tool of these people.
Instead, once the initial shock has worn off, it will come knocking on the door of the media.
The real question is how much will the incredibly deep and rich record of the internet influence this coming anti-media hysteria. How will the criticisms of people like Frank Rich, Seymour Hirsh, even such dedicated followers of the Marines as "Fiasco's" Hicks, be used against them in a phony 'war crimes' trial over who lost Iraq.
Then once, the naysayers are all purged and all is forgotten...
We will do it all again.
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Democratic oversight?
[Read the article: U.S. generals call for Democratic takeover]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How about just some adult supervision?
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Taxes and terror
[Read the article: The president's press conference, and what Bush didn't say]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The speech on Iraq was not a speech at all about Iraq. Yes, he opened up by ackowledging the problems everyone else in the universe long ago acknowledged. For a second I thought I was listening to a speech written three years ago. Or at least it should have been.
But after grudgingly stating the obvious, then saying how unhappy he was, like what has been going on in Iraq had nothing to do with him, we got treated to the stump speech.
Iraq is the center of the war on terror.
If we lose Iraq and its oil will be in the hands of terrorists who will hold our Hummers hostage while mountaining their oil financed terror invasion of USA.
And for the big finale and the GOP campaign slogan:
drum roll...
If you don't reelect the GOP you'll be paying higher taxes while being attacked by terrorists.
Bush even put a price on the cost of voting Democrat: $2,000.00, the estimated loss of the child credit. Vote Republican or pay $2000.00. Election year 2000's tax cut bribary now replaced by 2006's extortion.
Oh yeah, you won't need the money anyway, because if you vote Democrats the terrorists will kill you.
If the Dems want to blunt this "greed and fear" campaign they need to step up to the plate now and swing hard.