<p>Right back at you, Funding Father. I can always count on you to bring a smile to my face.</p>
<p>You still there, FF? I’ll respond to your hearty laugh post, but I am still waiting to find out specifically whether you think the surge is succeeding and what the basis for whatever you think is.</p>
<p>And meanwhile I am laughing.</p>
<p>I don’t know FF, </p>
<p>…I didn’t find the post suggesting we should jail them all and let God sort them out so funny as so very romantic…almost dreamy.</p>
<p>Who can fault a rueful reminiscence over a political time and place wherein the people that politically offended your political sensibilities could just be thrown into the can without the spectacle of a trial and all that dreary legal stuff. </p>
<p>You know, some people’s politics are, simply put, a crime and the malefactors should expect to be treated accordingly; let’s face it, political prisoners were once a di rigeur part of any “progressive” state worth the name…be a damned laughing stock without ‘em.</p>
<p>[Edit: Sandy Berger’s felonies don’t count, don’t be silly.]</p>
<p>So, who can blame our own romantics, here on cc, from getting all mushy thinking about the golden era and the good ole days when ‘PC’ wasn’t just a social convention.</p>
<p>interesteddad: Thanx for the Hans Blik quote which I had not seen before. </p>
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<p>It just about sums up the entire stupid war. Like two boys daring each other to step over a line, each declaring he has a bigger dog or a stronger dad. Or a WMD.</p>
<p>I had never seen that quote either. It’s pretty good, but a more accurate (albeit more laborious) analogy might also have Saddam Hussein laughing diabolically and saying “just you wait!” after having owned a pack of pit bulls that he had actually sicced on his own houseguests and, in addition to hanging out that sign, he has never shown that he had the dogs destroyed even though he promised to do so.</p>
<p>D’yer Maker:</p>
<p>Actually, there was a period of time, say from '92 to '95, when Saddam cooperated fully with the UN weapons inspectors. It was like pulling teeth at first, but they were eventually given full access to the sites, the scientists, etc. and were able to document the destruction of virtually all of Saddam’s weapons.</p>
<p>The only item of signficiance was some unaccounted for bio/chem weapons materials. It turned out that these had indeed been disposed of, but in such an inept fashion that there were no records to prove it (the stuff had just been buried in the desert). Evenually Sadaam had his scientists lead the inspectors to the site so they could take soil samples.</p>
<p>The trouble started when Saddaam threw the inspectors out, starting in 1996 - 1998. That’s when he started hanging the BEWARE OF DOG signs.</p>
<p>He didn’t have WMD programs, but he wanted people to think he did. Blix, who expected to find programs when he returned in 2002 based on Saddam’s behavior, visited 500 sites including sites identified for him by the US and European intelligence. He found nothing.</p>
<p>Okay, so the analogy goes:</p>
<p>Saddam Hussein is laughing diabolically and saying “just you wait!” after having owned a pack of pit bulls that he had actually sicced on his own houseguests and, in addition to hanging out that sign, he once showed that he had the dogs destroyed but then he wouldn’t let anyone look at his kennels anymore and, well, there’s still that opened bag of vittles that’s hard to ignore…</p>
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<p>John Boehner actually lied recently and said that only 1 member of the House voted against the invasion of Iraq. Over 100 voted against it.</p>
<p>Somehow this strikes me as symptomatic of what the protest movement is like these days:</p>
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<p>See <a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070601/ap_on_re_us/cindy_sheehan_land[/url]”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070601/ap_on_re_us/cindy_sheehan_land</a></p>
<p>Fendrock: I don’t get your point. Are you criticizing her or the pro-Iraq people that want to buy the land she purchased to site her protests hear Bush’s ranch?</p>
<p>Anyway, protest movement does not = Cindy Sheehan, whether you are supporting her or criticizing her. And actually these days a vast majority of Americans agree with much of what even she says about our involvement in the war.</p>
<p>I haven’t been following all of this too closely but – I found it sad and surprising that there was so little sympathy for Cindy Sheehan when she first lost her son and tried to speak to the President.</p>
<p>I’d like to think of protest movements as a way in which people raise their concerns, create public debate, and bring about meaningful change.</p>
<p>Contrast this to Sheehan being ignored by the President {how could any president refuse to meet with a grieving mother?). Her activism resulted in the purchase of land, which, to at least mark her effort, I would expect to become a peace park or some such.</p>
<p>Instead, the opposition would like to buy it – symbolically, a negation of her efforts.</p>
<p>Stalemate.</p>
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<p>It’s amazing. I saw a link on the Free Republic site (a large discussion forum for conservatives). The linked article was about the % of soldiers in Iraq that come from rural areas where most people earn less than the median income. </p>
<p>They interviewed a mother who had lost her son in Iraq when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb and overturned. She didn’t say one thing negative about the war. Nor did the article; it just pointed out where the majority of the troops are coming from.</p>
<p>Some of the Freepers comments on the article were horrible, including, since he came from a rural area, he could have rolled his Jeep just as easily at home, so he shouldn’t even be considered a casualty of the war at all.</p>
<p>Part of it I think is that in America we like to blame the victim, because somehow that means that whatever happened to them won’t happen to us, because we aren’t going to be as unwise, unworthy, etc as they are. Some of it I think is the generalized hostility in our society to women who speak out. The rest is the knee jerk reaction that some have anytime their beliefs are challenged. </p>
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<p>Some of the moms he has met with have had not very good things to say, so it’s probably in his best PR interests to avoid them. He gave one mom a special coin to commemorate her son’s death and told her “now don’t go selling it on E-bay.”
<a href=“http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2007/05/bush_to_mother_.html[/url]”>http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2007/05/bush_to_mother_.html</a></p>
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More liberal BS. President Bush met with Sheehan before she became an anti-american activist. She is a democrat. She even had a family photo showing President Bush giving her a kiss. She of course took that down once she demanded to meet with the President as if the world revolves around her and her demands. She wanted to meet with him a second time as a spectacle. Shame on her for exploiting her son’s death for her own political agenda.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45800[/url]”>http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45800</a></p>
<p>An anti-American activist? You know who the anti-Americans are? The people pressuring Bush to take their tax cuts out of our soldiers’ hides.</p>
<p>There is only so much he can borrow. Because the 28%-ers want us occupying Iraq (even though it’s done nothing but hurt our national security and help Al Queda), but refuse to pay a dime more in taxes to support it, Bush has no choice but to skimp every way he can on our soldiers.</p>
<p>If Congress passed a law tomorrow that each state had to have the same per capita ratio of National Guard and Reserve mobilizations, half the support for the war would evaporate overnight. If they then passed a law that taxes would be raised to pay for upgrading the troops equipment, Bush would veto it in a heartbeat, because the rest of the support would disappear.</p>
<p>The people who are anti-Americans are the ones who insist on prosecuting a war that harms our national interests and have the luxury of doing so because they know that only other people will have to sacrifice for it.</p>
<p>I recall – but won’t swear to this and will gladly stand corrected if I’m getting senile – that Sheehan actually did meet with President Bush, along with other gold star moms, and – in fact (or perhaps just in my imagination) – she was, at that point in time, supportive of the war effort and the President. It was later that she rethought her position, or regretted being a pawn, and decided to stake out a position as a gold star mom who was brave enough to say “no” to the war, to the President and struggle with the consequence that, implicitly, by following her conviction she was diminishing what her son had fought and died for – a rather difficult and selfless stand, I imagine, for a parent to take. </p>
<p>For all the talk of her being a media wh0re, I can’t imagine how hard it must be for strangers to claim that her stance means she doesn’t appreciate Casey’s life as much as she does, so – yes – I believe that her motivation was selfless at its core.</p>
<p>Anyway, while my biggest disappointments with Bush stem from leadership issues relating to the Iraq war – including his fear of doing the right thing as Commander-in-Chief by not appearing at a VA hospital until two days AFTER he defeated Kerry and not meeting with soldiers and families as much as he should have – I can’t say that a President has an obligation to meet with every parent of every slain soldier if they request an audience. Okay, maybe if you’ve got time for 5 week working-vacations at “the ranch” you have that kind of time 
, but in all seriousness, that’s an unfair expectation.</p>
<p>The big difference is in ownership. I admire Ronald Reagan’s ability to assume the burden of leadership as Commander-in-Chief in ways that make George W. Bush look like a complete wimp. And here’s why I have no respect for Bush as C-in-C…because when the U.S.S. Cole was attacked and 37 sailors were killed at sea and the Senate and the press were excoriating Reagan for his hawkish Persian Gulf policy, none of that interfered with his sense of priorities. So when the Cole limped into Miami, who was there, with his wife, standing in salute – even though the press used the photo op he virtually handed them to rail against him? Instead of letting his PR people tell him that it would hurt his ratings, Reagan had the decency to accept his duty, the bitter and the sweet of it, as the C-in-C. It’s a quality that I have yet to see in this President. He wears the bomber jackets and all that stuff, but when it comes to facing up to consequences, he has some empty words and stays away from situations that might be leveraged to make him look bad, despite the tremendous morale boost he could give wounded GIs and the families of those who have served. I’d have so much more respect for him, as a man and a leader, if he’d tell his PR consultants to screw off so he can take time – even just now and then – to do what’s right by the troops he sends to war.</p>
<p>You know who else has spoken out against the war and against Bush’s handling of it?</p>
<p>General Batiste. Lt. General Odom. Major General Eaton.</p>
<p>Are these all anti-American activists too?</p>
<p>This ridiculous notion of the 28%-ers, that a “good American” is someone who mindlessly agrees with whatever the people in power want to do–and anyone who speaks out against it is “anti-American”–is by definition anti-American.</p>
<p>Pay no attention to those discontented generals behind the curtain. They are just a bunch of sourpusses.
;)</p>
<p>Thanks, AM. :)</p>
<p>In all seriousness, I cannot stand the people who spit on our veterans and their families and question their patriotism as soon as there’s a political disagreement. The right is all up in arms over Bush questioning their patriotism over the immigration bill (see Peggy Noonan’s piece), but they themselves have been doing it to others for years over the Iraq fiasco–even to the people who fought over there.</p>
<p>Nothing to do with my post, but a helpful link to get some of the 28%-ers started on their journey to supporting the war in a meaningful way:</p>
<p><a href=“http://operationyellowelephant.blogspot.com/2005/10/oye-102-full-disclosure-by-pro-war.html[/url]”>http://operationyellowelephant.blogspot.com/2005/10/oye-102-full-disclosure-by-pro-war.html</a></p>
<p>The media plays a huge role in how protest actions are portrayed.</p>
<p>From what I read in the media, Sheehan was ignored by Bush.</p>
<p>If Bush had been willing to meet with her – even for a three minute photo op – it would have been easy for him to have given the occasion any spin he wished. Yet he chose not to see her at all.</p>
<p>Obviously, Bush cannot see every grieving mother, but there would have been much classier ways to have handled Cindy Sheehan than the one he chose.</p>
<p>I would think that, even for those who feel this war is justified, it would be easy to have empathy for those who have lost loved ones, even for those whose views of the war have changed because of their loss.</p>
<p>How many times does he need to meet with her to be “classy”?</p>