Letters to the Editor
NJSSJN
Published Letters: 46 Editor's Choice: 20
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Did Bush Lie?! Who cares.
[Read the article: Did Bush lie about Rove -- or did Rove lie to him?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In a word, uh, yes. But lie? That's such a strong word, and we don't want to hurt Mr. Bush's precious psyche, or harm the nation any now, do we?
There are so many elephants in the room these days Republicans may want to consider changing their mascot.
Has Bush lied about Rove? Valerie Plame? Has he lied about WMDs? About Iraq-9/11 connections? About what he knows about Harriet Miers' views on privacy and abortion? About why he wants to privatize Social Security? About why he wants to drill the Arctic Refuge? About how many Iraqi Army units are combat ready? About terrorist threat levels? About his actual beliefs, if he has any, regarding the necessity of teaching intelligent design in science classes? About et cetera?
Puh-leeze. I know you guys in the War Room call it like you see it every day, so kudos. But I'm tired of even the suggestion, tongue-in-cheek though it may be, that president Bush has not, in these last years, lied. Calling president Bush honest is like calling Paris Hilton chaste. What happened to the buck stopping somewhere in this once-great country of ours? The fact that the president is willing to accept liars and lying in his office is enough for me, whether he's swift enough to know if he did or did not actually lie into a microphone and on the record.
Is it just me or is America now the permanent vacation-land for hypocrisy? We want Iraq to form a secular society as Mr. Bush exalts Ms. Miers for our highest bench on account of "her religion." Saddam was lambasted for his torturous regime but the president is threatening his FIRST EVER veto so we can use any aggressive interrogation techniques we desire, but that's okay 'cause we're fightin' for some freedom! Science and Enlightenment are mere theories, never mind that Enlightenment is directly responsible for the founding documents of this country, and science is directly responsible for the success of our economic and militaristic hegemony. This is to say nothing of the humanistic (read: paganistic) notion of progression and where that impulse has gone. Oh, America, so fair, so just, never brutal, never crude! I know, we are still a very privileged nation, and I truly count myself lucky to be one of its privileged sons, but I'm getting more than a little bit motion sick riding so high a horse.
Look, I'm not saying France is any better, but who gave us the right to say we were better than France? Or any one else? Oh, my bad, that would be God.
I swear, atheism never looked so good.
Anyway. Did president Bush lie about Karl Rove? If he did will he be held accountable? Will conservatives turn on him? Will liberals ever content themselves with anything more constructive than "I told you so?" Doubt it. I truly feel as if I am going insane in an insane world � or at the least an insane country.
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She's only your bloody reporter, after all!
[Read the article: Times editor: Miller may have misled us, but we made mistakes, too]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wrote a letter to the Times back when they made their attempt at coming clean about their shoddy reporting on WMD, which, to my surprise, they ran. This article was printed on page A10, and, as I recall, had no front-page lead-in. My point to them was that if they wanted to be so diligent in letting their readership know they had messed up then maybe they should have made it a lead news article, putting in on page A1 and above the fold, even though it was essentially an editorial and not a hard news item. (For the full article and all of the letters go here: http://www.urielw.com/refs/040526.htm).
I might have further added, and this is a bit of hindsight on my part as well, that they should have fired Judy Miller. Right then and there they could have washed their hands of this whole mess.
When Ms. Miller went to jail I think a lot of us were torn. First, here was a journalist who was going to the mat for her source, about as laudable a thing a journalist can do, ethics-wise. But second, it was Judy "Aluminum Tubes" Miller, whose credibility had been utterly shot. The whole thing stank. Still does.
A federal shield law is a good idea, and is supported by many states attorneys general. What is not a good idea is for a respectable news agency -- any respectable news agency -- to stand by reporters and their editors who grotesquely mess stories up. The first amendment doesn't even have to come into it. Judy Miller and whoever was running the international desk should have been stricken from the Gray Lady, and the editor, Bill Keller or his predecessor, should have had the balls to do so. I mean this is only war we're talking about!
This, of course, pretty accurately reflects the lassitude and cowardice of much of the mainstream media. A lot of news agencies around here need to, ahem, grow a pair.
Who knows if it's just internal politics and first amendment righteousness that drove the Times to do what it did. Am I mad at the Times? Absolutely. But not half as mad as I am at the administration. The Times, to me, merely comes off as being pathetic. Of course, if the worst-case scenario is considered, then they become complicit, but I'm not sure I buy it. And, even if it's too little too late, at least they have the nerve to attempt coming clean. Mr. Bush, while he is "presidenting," might want to consider that himself. (Whoever wrote, "while I am presidenting," for the Bush/Bono thing is the man! Or woman!)