I was editing an editorial for Thursday’s paper which contained this passage, to which I could only react, "Wow — talk about living life to the fullest:"
Lt. Taylor
was assigned to Wheeler Army Airfield near Honolulu. He spent his Saturday night — on Dec. 6, 1941 — in a tuxedo, enjoying poker and dancing at the club. The next morning, he awoke to the sounds of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He and fellow pilot George Welch grabbed their tuxedo pants and raced to an auxiliary airfield to jump into their P-40 Warhawk fighters. They roared off the airstrip and into combat with the Japanese…
Related Posts
These were indeed great men doing what great men do in the face of peril: They were heroic, valorous, fearless and seldless. The men and women in Iraq have been acting in similar fashion for three years, and all we get are the negative sound bites and lies of a completely left wing, liberal and anti-american press. The State newspaper, NBC, ABC and CBS all feel free to present the wonderful truthes of heroism and fearless resolve to win on December 7, 1941. They cannot and will not present the wonderful truthes about what has been accomplished in the last three years in Iraq. They can’t, because it doesn’t fit their agenda. Now, that country is being torn completely apart and people are being destroyed because we’ve blinked. I am glad the dinosaur press wasn’t in 1941 what it is today. Ed
oops…selfless
Let’s stop with the WW II analogies to Iraq. They don’t work. Frankly the proper analogy would be to campare the U.S. in 2003 with the JAPANESE of 1941, not the Americans. In any event, now that we’ve been in Iraq longer than we fought the Japanese it’s just plain foolish to keep on with these bogus comparisons.
Just because you disagree with it doesn’t make it foolish, “bud.”
Of course, that wasn’t the point of this post.
You know, calling a guy “bud” when I don’t know his real name sounds like something those guys back in ’41 would have done. Hey, bud. Watch it, bud. Hey, where do you think you’re going, bud?
Brad, I wasn’t referring to you but to Ed. He changed the subject. I’m just so sick of the WW II analogies. WW II was clearly a war of necessity. America was united in a just cause against two dangerous world powers. The reason we’re not united in the Iraq war has nothing to do with the press, as Ed would have us believe. No, the reason we’re not united is that in Iraq, very much unlike WW II, a large a growing number of people simply do not see the necessity of the fight.
[…] all we get are the negative sound bites and lies of a completely left wing, liberal and anti-american press. [..] They cannot and will not present the wonderful truthes about what has been accomplished in the last three years in Iraq. They can’t, because it doesn’t fit their agenda.
I’d like some of what Ed’s been smoking.
AP reports:
Panel: U.S. underreported Iraq violence
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military and intelligence officials have systematically underreported the violence in Iraq in order to suit the Bush administration’s policy goals, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group said.
[…]
The panel pointed to one day last July when U.S. officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. “Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence,” it said.
James Baker, in a self deprecating comment, referred to the Iraq STudy Group as a bunch of hasbeens. How true that is. What a bunch of high ego windbags. Baker is on the Saudi payroll defending them against lawsuits brought in America. And Vernon Jordan, are we serious here. His claim to fame was in getting Monica a hush money job with a cosmetics corporation. Sort of a pimp of yesteryear. Hasbeens was correct.
Bud, I’m not trying to get people to believe anything. I come here to say what I believe and think is true, and I don’t really care whether you or anyone else believes it or not. Beyond that, I didn’t actually make the comparison between WWII and the present war that you accuse me of making…I simply said that the media then was much more fair, and actually realized that the United States was on the side of goodness and rightness in that war. Then I pointed out that todays’ media is a ridiculous caricature of what it was once, and in no way acknowledges that we are right. But since you’ve brought up comparisons, I do happen to believe that todays’ enemies are at least as evil as the ones we faced in 1941, and I believe that they have eerily similar motives: Destroy any countries and wipe out any people who do not convert and submit. These were pretty much the ideals of NAZI Germany and Imperial Japan I think. The only qualitative difference between them and our enemy today is in modes and methods. Todays enemies don’t hold huge midnight rallies in Berlin with red banners flying, they are widely spread out and more loosely organized. But they are at least as dedicated to our destruction as the earlier enemy was. So Bud, there’s a comparison for ya. And I still don’t care whether anyone, including you, believes it or not. Ed
“hasbeens”– is that Rush’s latest line?
I’m no James Baker fan but he’s a pretty canny Rethuglican political operative and a devoted Bush family retainer. You can bet that the reality on the ground is much worse than the ISG report.
Now you write off Baker when he saved Bush’s butt in Florida, 2000. Now you deride Baker when Der Decider sent him around trying to persuade countries to forgive Iraqi debts in 2003.
Baker is just the latest Rethuglican realist trying to save Der Decider from himself. Scowcraft warned against the entire Iraq adventure to no avail.
It’s obvious that this president is fanatically dedicated to taking this nation (and possibly the world) over the cliff.
=====
From Wikipedia:
Baker served as chief legal adviser for George W. Bush during the 2000 election campaign and oversaw the Florida recount. He was instrumental in getting the Supreme Court to intervene in the Florida vote recount. Over 200,000 votes were not counted due to problems with punch card ballots. [2]. He is currently (as of 2004) a senior partner at the law firm of Baker Botts and senior counsel to the Carlyle Group.
James Addison Baker III [..] Chief of Staff in President Ronald Reagan’s first administration, United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988 in the second Reagan administration, and Secretary of State in the administration of President George H. W. Bush.
Regretably, bud, I’m afraid our lack of consensus on the war — and the precarious situation on the ground in Iraq today — has a LOT to do with the way the media has reported it over here.
The observer and the observed interact through the process of observation. That is especially true in an age of worldwide, 24-hour TV news. Long before the situation became this chaotic in Iraq, cable news was reporting — over and over and over, since it has 24 hours to fill — every incidence of violence that did occur. Even with millions in oil money helping them, terrorists could never buy that kind of publicity to amplify the effect of each bombing or assassination. That helped keep them going back when insurgency wasn’t yet cool.
I remember. I was right here, reading newspapers and occasionally, to my horror on each occasion, seeing TV news. Every time I saw a TV report, I thought about all those Americans who say they get all their news from television, and I wondered how support for the war had lasted as long as it had.
Kind of like how those of us who weren’t relying solely on TV for our information wondered and wonder still how someone as “informed” as a news editor can still muster support for such a debacle?
All I can figure is that you give him your unwavering backing due to the fact you see W as the herald of your generation and its mustered “accomplishments.” If this is the best you can proffer, bring on generation next.
Just think, Brad, of how much shorter the support would have lasted if the authorities hadn’t systematically under-reported violence by a factor of ten.
Just think, Brad, of how much less support there would have been from the beginning if the Bush Administration hadn’t politicized the intel agencies; cherry-picked the intel; and, scared the public silly.
You really ought to read Thomas Ricks’ Fiasco and re-evaluate your positions seriously.
The only reasons that the American public acquiesced to invading Iraq was due to
–popular ignorance and misinformation fostered by the entire media (see NYT, Judith Miller);
— misplaced trust in our government;
— weak-kneed “journalists” like yourself refusing to ask tough question;
— a partisan Rethuglican Congress abdicating oversight;
— and, fear-based hysteria instilled by the Bush Administration.
Please don’t disingenuously blame TeeVee News when The State endorsed Bush even after he’d demonstrated his incompetence for three years.
It would have been nice — very, very nice — if the Democrats had offered a choice. There had been some good ones running, but somehow Kerry got on the ballot.
Parties. That’s what they give you. Bush or Kerry. That’s like a choice between taking a long walk off a short pier or having a hole drilled in your head.
I understand fully why the Tampa Tribune endorsed no one. But that’s just not acceptable. One of them is going to be president, and that’s too important to cop out on — even when you’re going to be miserable with either choice.
This one will set off bud, but it’s fascinating the way you “Parisians” (bud’s suggested substituted for “partisans”) equate policy with party or personality.
Capital A is supposedly talking about the war, and suddenly changes subjects by saying “you give him your unwavering backing.” What? The war is a “him” and not an “it” all of a sudden? The pathetic thing is that we all know that “him” is Bush, even though such an association makes no sense whatsoever — particularly addressed to me, since I would guess that a majority of the times I mention “him” it’s critically.
What are you folks gonna do when it’s somebody else in the White House dealing with our Iraq involvement? And that will happen starting in January 2009, unless leaders in Washington completely lose their minds between now and then.
Even the Iraq Study Group report, which everyone is touting as the big “get out” timetable, would leave about 70,000 troops there AFTER the big-deal deadline. And of course, the deadline itself is phony. The only way the panel could agree to it was by sidestepping their military advisers (see the story about that on the front of Thursday’s NYT).
When we get to January 09, and we’re still heavily involved over there, you’re going to find it terribly disorienting if you can’t separate the war from that former president you couldn’t stand.
The smart thing to do would be to start separating the two in your minds NOW. It will help you think more clearly. I NEVER wanted Bush; I wanted McCain in 2000 and still do. But the war was the thing to do.
Furthermore — watch this feat of derring, ladies and gentlemen — I am able to separate THAT opinion from my opinion as to what we should do NOW. Even if we shouldn’t have gone in, we can’t leave without doing greater harm than if we’d never gotten involved.
Of course, there are those who favored the invasion and think that, as awful as the consequences would be, we should get out. Well, good for them — at least they are able to separate two completely different concepts, something which too few seem able to accomplish.
I just happen to disagree with them.
Here’s a great column that explains the Seeds of Intellectual Destruction for Bud, RTH, and their ilk. This Iraq war would have been long over if it wasn’t for obstructionists and defeatists.
Lex, those of us in the reality-based community realize that Der Decider and his cronies have had five years of free rein in Iraq.
They didn’t have a real plan past defeating Saddam’s army and capturing the captial. Oh, they had some non-sensical dreams of making Iraq into a neo-con/libertarian utopia after decades of brutal authoritarian rule and years of economically debilitatiing sanctions. But, they didn’t have any realistic plans for nation-building.
That was their downfall. And, they are our national curse.
Brad, there was a choice in 2004: (1) choose a liar and deceiver who misled this nation into a foreign invasion of choice; (2) choose a U.S. Senator with decades of service who had the guts to help put an end to our last quagmire.
Even if you didn’t like 90% of Kerry’s platform/record and you liked 90% of Bush’s presidential record, invading Iraq under fraudulent pretenses should have been the deal breaker.
Instead, you chose the ostrich route: bury your head in the sand and hope (against proven recorded fact) that Bush’s Iraq adventure would turn out well enough.
In brief: better to chose the devil that you don’t know rather than the one who has already led the nation down the path towards destruction.
There you go again, alleging that opponents of the war conflate our “hatred” of Bush with policy disagreements. This is stupidly insulting on your part but I’ve grown accustomed to that trait of yours. Add your evident ignorance and it’s a nasty brew– especially for someone who should be more knowlegeable than the average reader.
Ed, RTH, bud, Capital A, bill, Phillip, Preston, et al,
I’m soliciting your comments for the thread above on education entitled “Here’s your chance to help.” I realize education funding is not as glamorous a topic as the reshaping of policy in Iraq. But the war in Iraq will eventually end; not so our obligation to educate our children efficiently and well.
So hop on over and comment. Your ideas just might become new state policy.
And Mary,Mary-please don’t play hard to get. This is your big chance to play well with others. I want the Marys of tomorrrow to learn how to argue as cogently as you (although perhaps to be a wee bit less pugnacious about it).