"The Progressive Perspective" will be off the air for a few weeks for a cross-country relocation.
In the meantime, here are some other progressive news and opinion sites lest you feel the urge to turn to (gasp!) Rush Limbaugh:
Never stop thinking for yourself, and see you in a few weeks!
9/15/2004
9/10/2004
What I Really Meant To Say Was...
Earlier this week, Vice President Cheney made headlines by saying that we had better "make the right choice" on Election Day, "because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again." In other words, vote Republican or else.
This did not go over well with many people, and quite a few comments were made on how Cheney apparently cannot gain votes through reasoned discourse or pointing to the Bush Administration's first-term accomplishments (no, wait, there aren't any), so he has to resort to fear and threats instead.
The Vice President has now been let out of his secure undisclosed location to do some damage control, with the first stop being an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer after a rally in Ohio. Surprise, surprise -- he now says he didn't really mean it.
"I did not say if [John] Kerry is elected, we will be hit by a terrorist attack," Cheney said. "Whoever is elected president has to anticipate more attacks. My point was the question before us is: Will we have the most effective policy in place to deal with that threat? George Bush will pursue a more effective policy than John Kerry."
He was the voice of reason itself and it was a good college try at spin. But we all know he meant exactly what he said. He really was deadly serious in saying we would face more and worse terrorist attacks should we actually take democracy seriously and vote the "wrong" way on November 2.
Cheney's arrogance is truly breathtaking. Imagine the gall required for someone to actually get up and say that if we dare vote for someone else, we will pay the price. On the other hand, we don't have to imagine it. We see it every time he insists that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were bosom buddies, as he did yet again at yesterday's rally, despite the fact that this has been debunked more times than can be counted, most recently and definitively by the 9/11 commission's final report.
But he is hardly alone in continuing to foist this deception off on the American people. Hardly a campaign speech goes by, whether it's from President Bush or someone else, that rhetorically links the two very separate groups. And it's working, too -- according to a Newsweek poll conducted late last week, 42% of Americans still believe that Saddam was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks. (This is down from the 69% of Americans so hoodwinked a year ago, but that's still quite a lot of indoctrinated people.)
Which means that no matter what Cheney says to get re-elected, regardless of its validity, honesty or even sanity, he fits right in with the rest of the crowd.
This did not go over well with many people, and quite a few comments were made on how Cheney apparently cannot gain votes through reasoned discourse or pointing to the Bush Administration's first-term accomplishments (no, wait, there aren't any), so he has to resort to fear and threats instead.
The Vice President has now been let out of his secure undisclosed location to do some damage control, with the first stop being an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer after a rally in Ohio. Surprise, surprise -- he now says he didn't really mean it.
"I did not say if [John] Kerry is elected, we will be hit by a terrorist attack," Cheney said. "Whoever is elected president has to anticipate more attacks. My point was the question before us is: Will we have the most effective policy in place to deal with that threat? George Bush will pursue a more effective policy than John Kerry."
He was the voice of reason itself and it was a good college try at spin. But we all know he meant exactly what he said. He really was deadly serious in saying we would face more and worse terrorist attacks should we actually take democracy seriously and vote the "wrong" way on November 2.
Cheney's arrogance is truly breathtaking. Imagine the gall required for someone to actually get up and say that if we dare vote for someone else, we will pay the price. On the other hand, we don't have to imagine it. We see it every time he insists that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were bosom buddies, as he did yet again at yesterday's rally, despite the fact that this has been debunked more times than can be counted, most recently and definitively by the 9/11 commission's final report.
But he is hardly alone in continuing to foist this deception off on the American people. Hardly a campaign speech goes by, whether it's from President Bush or someone else, that rhetorically links the two very separate groups. And it's working, too -- according to a Newsweek poll conducted late last week, 42% of Americans still believe that Saddam was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks. (This is down from the 69% of Americans so hoodwinked a year ago, but that's still quite a lot of indoctrinated people.)
Which means that no matter what Cheney says to get re-elected, regardless of its validity, honesty or even sanity, he fits right in with the rest of the crowd.
9/09/2004
Vote Republican...Or Else
Knowing they have no real successes to point to, the GOP has rapidly sunk into the gutter, resorting to name-calling and similarly juvenile tactics. For example, one need merely look at Zell Miller's rambling attack on all Democrats as would-be traitors. Not to mention the allegedly independent Republican merchandise, from the "10 Out Of 10 Terrorists Agree: Anybody But Bush" bumper stickers to the "John Kerry: Osama's Choice" buttons.
But even by these low standards, Vice President Cheney's latest comment raised eyebrows.
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice," Cheney said at a rally in Des Moines. "Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."
So let me get this straight: if we vote for John Kerry, al Qaeda will bomb Wall Street, the Statue of Liberty, and Disneyland.
But if we vote for George W. Bush, we'll be safe.
It sounds like something out of a gangster movie. I can just imagine some big guy wearing a suit bulging at the armpit from a barely-concealed .45, muscling his way into the voting booth and growling, "Youse know what youse gotta do, right? Just vote duh right way and nobody gets hoit. After all, youse would hate for somet'in' bad to happen, right?"
Does Cheney really believe that Osama bin Laden (remember him?) is quaking in his mountain cave at the thought of a Bush re-election? Why should he? Remember that Bush all but abandoned the hunt for him a few months after 9/11, and indeed handed him a gold-plated recruiting poster by invading and occupying Iraq.
One would think that bin Laden would be praying for Bush to win. After all, John Kerry might actually take this War on Terror stuff seriously and go after the guys who really hit us that awful September morning. But if Bush wins, bin Laden can be assured of four more years of incompetent bumbling and attacking the wrong people.
Somewhere, Joe McCarthy is smiling. Rarely has a candidate so blatantly and shamelessly threatened people with the consequences of taking democracy seriously. Cheney might as well walk around holding a sign saying, "Vote Republican...Or Else!"
Cheney's remarks show just how desperate the Bush campaign has become to win at any cost. But even more than being simply dumb, trying to intimidate us into voting a certain way is, as Democratic VP candidate John Edwards rightly pointed out, un-American.
If Cheney cannot win votes other than by bullying us with the promise of devastating attacks "if we make the wrong choice," he does not deserve to win this or any other election. It's so simple, even he can understand it.
But even by these low standards, Vice President Cheney's latest comment raised eyebrows.
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice," Cheney said at a rally in Des Moines. "Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."
So let me get this straight: if we vote for John Kerry, al Qaeda will bomb Wall Street, the Statue of Liberty, and Disneyland.
But if we vote for George W. Bush, we'll be safe.
It sounds like something out of a gangster movie. I can just imagine some big guy wearing a suit bulging at the armpit from a barely-concealed .45, muscling his way into the voting booth and growling, "Youse know what youse gotta do, right? Just vote duh right way and nobody gets hoit. After all, youse would hate for somet'in' bad to happen, right?"
Does Cheney really believe that Osama bin Laden (remember him?) is quaking in his mountain cave at the thought of a Bush re-election? Why should he? Remember that Bush all but abandoned the hunt for him a few months after 9/11, and indeed handed him a gold-plated recruiting poster by invading and occupying Iraq.
One would think that bin Laden would be praying for Bush to win. After all, John Kerry might actually take this War on Terror stuff seriously and go after the guys who really hit us that awful September morning. But if Bush wins, bin Laden can be assured of four more years of incompetent bumbling and attacking the wrong people.
Somewhere, Joe McCarthy is smiling. Rarely has a candidate so blatantly and shamelessly threatened people with the consequences of taking democracy seriously. Cheney might as well walk around holding a sign saying, "Vote Republican...Or Else!"
Cheney's remarks show just how desperate the Bush campaign has become to win at any cost. But even more than being simply dumb, trying to intimidate us into voting a certain way is, as Democratic VP candidate John Edwards rightly pointed out, un-American.
If Cheney cannot win votes other than by bullying us with the promise of devastating attacks "if we make the wrong choice," he does not deserve to win this or any other election. It's so simple, even he can understand it.
9/08/2004
One Thousand
Many reasons have been advanced as to just why we all but abandoned the hunt for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to pursue our splendid little war in Iraq. Some say we attacked to satisfy George W. Bush's personal quest for revenge against the man who "tried to kill my daddy." Others cite the imperial fantasies of the Administration neoconservatives, or the American oil industry's thirst for Iraq's oil reserves, or other reasons, or all of the above.
Some even believe the official White House reason. Never mind that the reason keeps changing on an almost daily basis, mutating from Saddam Hussein's vast weapons-of-mass-destruction arsenal to his highly advanced weapons programs to his could-possibly-be-a-threat-someday-if-the-stars-are-aligned-properly programs, to his "capability" of having such programs. There was Saddam's hidden hand behind 9/11, which became his propensity for giving WMD to terrorists, which became an undefined "relationship" with al Qaeda. There was also his undeniably brutal dictatorship, but that was just peachy with us during his charnel-house war with Iran back in the 1980s. The constantly shifting justifications seem to have finally centered more or less on the charge that Saddam was a very bad man.
But whatever reason you choose, from saving humanity to a new Crusade for the 21st century, there can be little doubt that what was grandly named Operation Iraqi Freedom has become a nightmare in the desert. We have earned the hatred of the world, have poured more than $135 billion into the sand (just think of what we could have accomplished with that money here at home!), and have now sent our one-thousandth American to his death there.
Sixteen months and more than 800 lives ago, President Bush (who went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War and escaped the consequences thanks to his family connections) pulled off his little Top Gun stunt by landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. He declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended," in a statement that surely ranks right up there as one of the most blissfully ignorant things ever said.
Since then, we have watched in numb horror as the bodies piled up and the casualty lists grew longer. We were told that the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein would end the fighting. Then we were told that Saddam's capture would end the fighting. Then we were told that the "transfer of sovereignty" to a handpicked group of Iraqis would end the fighting. None of them turned out as planned. The fighting goes on, and the corpses continue to come home.
And every time a family back home got the news no family should ever receive, we were told that their sacrifice was heroic, that their sons and daughters died to win the War on Terror™, regardless of the fact that the Bush Administration discarded it to pursue their little Mesopotamian vendetta.
We do not yet know just who became casualty #1000, but we do know several things about him.
We know that his remains will land at Dover Air Force Base in the middle of the night, stealthily brought back into the country by a military convinced that the sight of our soldiers returning in flag-draped coffins must be hidden from the American people lest people ask why they had to die in the first place.
We know that Bush will not go to his funeral, just as he has refused to attend the funerals of any of the young men and women who went to Iraq to die at his command.
And we know that he will not be the last to die, as George W. Bush is inexorably committed to "staying the course." Never mind the fact that there is no course to stay, there is only a perpetual holding action with no strategy, no end and increasingly no purpose.
Some may say that I am allowing my anger to leak through as I write these words. You're right, I am angry.
I am angry at the uncaring waste of American and Iraqi life. I am angry at those who never themselves fought in a war but eagerly send others to their deaths on an ideological whim while brushing off the warnings of the veterans who know what combat is like. I am angry at those who praise noble sacrifice with one hand and cut service pay and medical benefits with the other. I am angry at everyone who sees our men and women in uniform not as individual people with families and hopes and dreams, but as faceless numbers to be thrown away.
And I am angry at the puppet masters in power who seem to believe that endlessly telling the same lies over and over again will magically transform them into truths.
Voting George W. Bush and his crowd of ideologues out of power on November 2 will not bring back the people who have died because of their negligence and incompetence. But it will ensure that no one else has to follow in their grim footsteps.
Some even believe the official White House reason. Never mind that the reason keeps changing on an almost daily basis, mutating from Saddam Hussein's vast weapons-of-mass-destruction arsenal to his highly advanced weapons programs to his could-possibly-be-a-threat-someday-if-the-stars-are-aligned-properly programs, to his "capability" of having such programs. There was Saddam's hidden hand behind 9/11, which became his propensity for giving WMD to terrorists, which became an undefined "relationship" with al Qaeda. There was also his undeniably brutal dictatorship, but that was just peachy with us during his charnel-house war with Iran back in the 1980s. The constantly shifting justifications seem to have finally centered more or less on the charge that Saddam was a very bad man.
But whatever reason you choose, from saving humanity to a new Crusade for the 21st century, there can be little doubt that what was grandly named Operation Iraqi Freedom has become a nightmare in the desert. We have earned the hatred of the world, have poured more than $135 billion into the sand (just think of what we could have accomplished with that money here at home!), and have now sent our one-thousandth American to his death there.
Sixteen months and more than 800 lives ago, President Bush (who went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War and escaped the consequences thanks to his family connections) pulled off his little Top Gun stunt by landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. He declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended," in a statement that surely ranks right up there as one of the most blissfully ignorant things ever said.
Since then, we have watched in numb horror as the bodies piled up and the casualty lists grew longer. We were told that the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein would end the fighting. Then we were told that Saddam's capture would end the fighting. Then we were told that the "transfer of sovereignty" to a handpicked group of Iraqis would end the fighting. None of them turned out as planned. The fighting goes on, and the corpses continue to come home.
And every time a family back home got the news no family should ever receive, we were told that their sacrifice was heroic, that their sons and daughters died to win the War on Terror™, regardless of the fact that the Bush Administration discarded it to pursue their little Mesopotamian vendetta.
We do not yet know just who became casualty #1000, but we do know several things about him.
We know that his remains will land at Dover Air Force Base in the middle of the night, stealthily brought back into the country by a military convinced that the sight of our soldiers returning in flag-draped coffins must be hidden from the American people lest people ask why they had to die in the first place.
We know that Bush will not go to his funeral, just as he has refused to attend the funerals of any of the young men and women who went to Iraq to die at his command.
And we know that he will not be the last to die, as George W. Bush is inexorably committed to "staying the course." Never mind the fact that there is no course to stay, there is only a perpetual holding action with no strategy, no end and increasingly no purpose.
Some may say that I am allowing my anger to leak through as I write these words. You're right, I am angry.
I am angry at the uncaring waste of American and Iraqi life. I am angry at those who never themselves fought in a war but eagerly send others to their deaths on an ideological whim while brushing off the warnings of the veterans who know what combat is like. I am angry at those who praise noble sacrifice with one hand and cut service pay and medical benefits with the other. I am angry at everyone who sees our men and women in uniform not as individual people with families and hopes and dreams, but as faceless numbers to be thrown away.
And I am angry at the puppet masters in power who seem to believe that endlessly telling the same lies over and over again will magically transform them into truths.
Voting George W. Bush and his crowd of ideologues out of power on November 2 will not bring back the people who have died because of their negligence and incompetence. But it will ensure that no one else has to follow in their grim footsteps.
9/07/2004
Watch What I Say, Not What I Do
It made for great theater. In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, President Bush set a markedly different tone than the red-meat rhetoric previously on display from other speakers. Unlike Zell Miller and others, he did not all but accuse the Democratic Party of treason en masse for daring to take democracy seriously and run a candidate in this year's election.
No, the Bush on display was a return to the "compassionate conservative" language of the candidate of old, before the 2000 election was safely in the bag and all that nonsense could go into the trash can. He attempted to make us forget the swaggering, the boasting, the bullying, and reassure us that he really did care.
"I believe we have a moral responsibility to honor America's seniors," Bush said to loud applause, "so I brought Republicans and Democrats together to strengthen Medicare. Now seniors are getting immediate help buying medicine. Soon every senior will be able to get prescription drug coverage, and nothing will hold us back."
Of course, he did not mention that the bill which he so enthusiastically signed into law actually barred Medicare from negotiating volume discounts from pharmaceutical companies as can the VA health system, Medicaid, large insurance plans, and other customers. Nor did he mention that in anticipation of having to give senior consumers discounts on their medications, a number of pharmaceutical firms actually jacked up the prices on their products, ensuring that their profit margins would remain sacrosanct.
Putting such pesky facts aside, the speech did sound good. But the day after so proudly touting this wonderful acheivement, the Bush Administration announced a 17 percent increase in Medicare premiums, from $66.60 a month to $78.20. The very next day. And right before a three-day weekend. Even given the White House's propensity for burying bad news on a Friday or a weekend when nobody will pay attention, that really takes large brass ones.
To put this in perspective, Social Security benefits, upon which many seniors depend to make their premium payments, are increasing by only 3 percent this year.
The Republicans apparently think they can pull a fast one over on Americans by splashily spouting feel-good oratory one day and then quietly delivering the bad news the next day. Will Americans let them get away with it?
No, the Bush on display was a return to the "compassionate conservative" language of the candidate of old, before the 2000 election was safely in the bag and all that nonsense could go into the trash can. He attempted to make us forget the swaggering, the boasting, the bullying, and reassure us that he really did care.
"I believe we have a moral responsibility to honor America's seniors," Bush said to loud applause, "so I brought Republicans and Democrats together to strengthen Medicare. Now seniors are getting immediate help buying medicine. Soon every senior will be able to get prescription drug coverage, and nothing will hold us back."
Of course, he did not mention that the bill which he so enthusiastically signed into law actually barred Medicare from negotiating volume discounts from pharmaceutical companies as can the VA health system, Medicaid, large insurance plans, and other customers. Nor did he mention that in anticipation of having to give senior consumers discounts on their medications, a number of pharmaceutical firms actually jacked up the prices on their products, ensuring that their profit margins would remain sacrosanct.
Putting such pesky facts aside, the speech did sound good. But the day after so proudly touting this wonderful acheivement, the Bush Administration announced a 17 percent increase in Medicare premiums, from $66.60 a month to $78.20. The very next day. And right before a three-day weekend. Even given the White House's propensity for burying bad news on a Friday or a weekend when nobody will pay attention, that really takes large brass ones.
To put this in perspective, Social Security benefits, upon which many seniors depend to make their premium payments, are increasing by only 3 percent this year.
The Republicans apparently think they can pull a fast one over on Americans by splashily spouting feel-good oratory one day and then quietly delivering the bad news the next day. Will Americans let them get away with it?
9/02/2004
The Gloves Come Off
It was like Old Home Night at the GOP convention yesterday. All this wishy-washy "kinder and gentler" nonsense went right out the window, and top Republican officials got down to what they do best -- slash-and-burn attacks.
In his remarkably ugly keynote speech, Democratic (in name only) Senator Zell Miller wistfully recalled the good old days of the 1940 election, when Wendell Wilkie refused to campaign effectively against FDR on security issues, then harshly attacked today's Democrats for not having the same willingness to roll over and play dead.
"While young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan," Miller thundered righteously, "our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our Commander in Chief."
No, it's being torn apart because a lot of people are rather unhappy that our Commander in Chief sent young Americans to die in the sands of Iraq under false pretenses and with no postwar planning other than wishful thinking. It's being made weaker because the rest of the world is isolating us to stew in our own juices, seeing us as a power-mad bully who would rather push other countries around than work with them to fight al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups.
The Democrats don't have to do all that. President Bush is doing it very nicely all by himself.
Referring to (unspecified) comments from Democratic leaders, Miller growled that "nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators." Heck, he doesn't have to hear that from Democrats, or even from Americans. All he has to do is listen to the officially liberated people of Iraq, who see us very much as occupiers and want us out. For that matter, he can listen to none other than George W. Bush himself, who said in April that Iraqis are "not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either."
Oh yes, and John Kerry "can only encourage our enemies" by actually thinking about various possible courses of action instead of seizing on one and never deviating from it no matter how disastrous the results.
(This came after President Bush of all people caused a minor stir by saying the War on Terror can never be won, only to be smacked around by his handlers and sent to grovel on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, saying that he didn't really mean it.)
He all but accused the Democrats of treason. How dare they field a candidate for President? Don't they know there's a war on? (He seems to have forgotten that we have a little thing in America called democracy.)
All in all, it was one of the most repulsive speeches in recent convention history, threatening to outdo even Pat Buchanan's 1992 "culture war" rant.
Then Vice President Cheney took the stage.
After talking about how "businesses are creating jobs, people are returning to work" without mentioning that newly-created jobs pay far less than those that were lost, he got down to business.
Tearing into Kerry, he sneered about his "more sensitive war on terror," conveniently forgetting that Bush himself aired the same sentiments just last month. He also attacked Kerry for voting against pouring more money into the Iraq occupation, saying "he does not seem to understand the first obligation of a commander in chief and that is to support American troops in combat." As opposed to sending them into combat in the first place based on lies, wishful thinking, and political obsessions, of course.
Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else see something wrong with the logic of throwing soldiers into harm's way as cannon fodder and then attacking anyone who doesn't fall into line?
Cheney went on to use the very same rhetoric that has been proven wrong time and time again. It's like nothing has changed in all the months since we invaded Iraq.
Cheney also repeated the standard GOP attack on Kerry for reconsidering his position upon realizing that his original viewpoint was wrong. Republicans call this flip-flopping. Others call it maturity and intelligence. (In a sign of the doublethink for which this Administration is justly notorious, Bush himself is thus guilty of flip-flopping in the first degree for having changed his mind quite a few times, only in his case it's called "being Presidential.")
In all, in terms of words used, Cheney spent fully twenty-five percent of his speech attacking Kerry (that's 671 words out of a total of 2,658) while barely mentioning the real issues facing America. Our economic problems merited 92 words. Health care gathered only 50 words. And Iraq, the great obsession of the Bush Administration, warranted a grand total of 34 words.
With 976 American soldiers killed in Iraq so far, that's almost 29 dead per word.
One would think they would rate more in an Administration which claims to love them so much.
Still, the convention's grand finale is coming up tonight. President Bush's speech has been publicized in advance as laying out his second-term agenda. Given the fact that he has yet to present a first-term agenda apart from a principle of endless war against anyone who looks at us sideways, I'll believe it when I see it.
In his remarkably ugly keynote speech, Democratic (in name only) Senator Zell Miller wistfully recalled the good old days of the 1940 election, when Wendell Wilkie refused to campaign effectively against FDR on security issues, then harshly attacked today's Democrats for not having the same willingness to roll over and play dead.
"While young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan," Miller thundered righteously, "our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our Commander in Chief."
No, it's being torn apart because a lot of people are rather unhappy that our Commander in Chief sent young Americans to die in the sands of Iraq under false pretenses and with no postwar planning other than wishful thinking. It's being made weaker because the rest of the world is isolating us to stew in our own juices, seeing us as a power-mad bully who would rather push other countries around than work with them to fight al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups.
The Democrats don't have to do all that. President Bush is doing it very nicely all by himself.
Referring to (unspecified) comments from Democratic leaders, Miller growled that "nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators." Heck, he doesn't have to hear that from Democrats, or even from Americans. All he has to do is listen to the officially liberated people of Iraq, who see us very much as occupiers and want us out. For that matter, he can listen to none other than George W. Bush himself, who said in April that Iraqis are "not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either."
Oh yes, and John Kerry "can only encourage our enemies" by actually thinking about various possible courses of action instead of seizing on one and never deviating from it no matter how disastrous the results.
(This came after President Bush of all people caused a minor stir by saying the War on Terror can never be won, only to be smacked around by his handlers and sent to grovel on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, saying that he didn't really mean it.)
He all but accused the Democrats of treason. How dare they field a candidate for President? Don't they know there's a war on? (He seems to have forgotten that we have a little thing in America called democracy.)
All in all, it was one of the most repulsive speeches in recent convention history, threatening to outdo even Pat Buchanan's 1992 "culture war" rant.
Then Vice President Cheney took the stage.
After talking about how "businesses are creating jobs, people are returning to work" without mentioning that newly-created jobs pay far less than those that were lost, he got down to business.
Tearing into Kerry, he sneered about his "more sensitive war on terror," conveniently forgetting that Bush himself aired the same sentiments just last month. He also attacked Kerry for voting against pouring more money into the Iraq occupation, saying "he does not seem to understand the first obligation of a commander in chief and that is to support American troops in combat." As opposed to sending them into combat in the first place based on lies, wishful thinking, and political obsessions, of course.
Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else see something wrong with the logic of throwing soldiers into harm's way as cannon fodder and then attacking anyone who doesn't fall into line?
Cheney went on to use the very same rhetoric that has been proven wrong time and time again. It's like nothing has changed in all the months since we invaded Iraq.
- "In the global war on terror, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, President Bush has brought many allies to our side." He forgot to mention that most of the allies who supported us in Afghanistan refused to do so in Iraq, correctly seeing that one had nothing to do with the other and that invading Iraq was being pursued for all the wrong reasons.
- "As the President has made very clear, there is a difference between leading a coalition of many, and submitting to the objections of a few." Opposition to the Iraq war was not about the "objections of a few," it was about the objections of most of the world. With very few exceptions, while some governments may have joined the much-flogged Coalition of the Willing via foreign-aid bribes or threats of diplomatic retaliation, the civilian populations of these countries were fiercely opposed to the invasion.
- "George W. Bush will never seek a permission slip to defend the American people." Of course, the root of the opposition to attacking Iraq was that it had nothing to do with defending America; it was about picking a political fight with a country that most definitely was not a threat.
Cheney also repeated the standard GOP attack on Kerry for reconsidering his position upon realizing that his original viewpoint was wrong. Republicans call this flip-flopping. Others call it maturity and intelligence. (In a sign of the doublethink for which this Administration is justly notorious, Bush himself is thus guilty of flip-flopping in the first degree for having changed his mind quite a few times, only in his case it's called "being Presidential.")
In all, in terms of words used, Cheney spent fully twenty-five percent of his speech attacking Kerry (that's 671 words out of a total of 2,658) while barely mentioning the real issues facing America. Our economic problems merited 92 words. Health care gathered only 50 words. And Iraq, the great obsession of the Bush Administration, warranted a grand total of 34 words.
With 976 American soldiers killed in Iraq so far, that's almost 29 dead per word.
One would think they would rate more in an Administration which claims to love them so much.
Still, the convention's grand finale is coming up tonight. President Bush's speech has been publicized in advance as laying out his second-term agenda. Given the fact that he has yet to present a first-term agenda apart from a principle of endless war against anyone who looks at us sideways, I'll believe it when I see it.
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