<p>Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence </p>
<p>The New York Times
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN </p>
<p>George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think youre stupid. Yes, they do. </p>
<p>They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election. </p>
<p>Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, They must think Im stupid. Because they surely do. </p>
<p>They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush teams real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerrys mangled gibe at the president. </p>
<p>What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to the U.S. military than to send it into combat in Iraq without enough men to launch an invasion of a foreign country not by the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, but by the Rumsfeld Doctrine of just enough troops to lose? What could be a bigger insult than that? </p>
<p>What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so that some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs in Iraq would only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could be more injurious and insulting than Don Rumsfelds response to criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the army youve got get over it. </p>
<p>What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than to send them off to war in Iraq without any coherent postwar plan for political reconstruction there, so that the U.S. military has had to assume not only security responsibilities for all of Iraq but the political rebuilding as well? The Bush team has created a veritable library of military histories from Cobra II to Fiasco to State of Denial all of which contain the same damning conclusion offered by the very soldiers and officers who fought this war: This administration never had a plan for the morning after, and weve been making it up and paying the price ever since.</p>
<p>And what could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in Iraq than to send them off to war and then go out and finance the very people theyre fighting against with our gluttonous consumption of oil? Sure, George Bush told us were addicted to oil, but he has not done one single significant thing demanded higher mileage standards from Detroit, imposed a gasoline tax or even used the bully pulpit of the White House to drive conservation to end that addiction. So we continue to finance the U.S. military with our tax dollars, while we finance Iran, Syria, Wahhabi mosques and Al Qaeda madrassas with our energy purchases. </p>
<p>Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century to bring out the best in us. His genius is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country. </p>
<p>And Karl Rove has succeeded at that in the past because he was sure that he could sell just enough Bush cigarettes, even though people knew they caused cancer. Please, please, for our countrys health, prove him wrong this time. </p>
<p>Let Karl know that youre not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has through sheer incompetence brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable. </p>
<p>Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq and then get away with it by holding on to the House and the Senate it means our country has become a banana republic. It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party to account. </p>
<p>It means were as stupid as Karl thinks we are. </p>
<p>I, for one, dont think were that stupid. Next Tuesday well see.</p>
<p>usna09mom is a disrupter and apparently can not follow the forum rules:</p>
<p>Copyrighted Material & E-mail Content. Please do NOT post copyrighted material in our forum. Examples of copyrighted material include articles from publications or websites, book excerpts, or any other content which you have not created yourself. Fair use allows brief excerpts, e.g., a sentence or two, from copyrighted material for the purposes of review and commentary; please do not post massive excerpts from any source. Also, for legal reasons, please do not quote the text of e-mail communications; such material may be paraphrased if appropriate (and if not privileged or confidential) but should not be reproduced in the forum.</p>
<p>The purpose of the original post was for review and commentary, and fyi name-calling might be considered defamatory. Cant you imagine different points of view in a democracy? I suggest that you review the Bill of Rights and pay close attention to the first amendment. Nonetheless, most would agree that Thomas Friedman knows more about the Middle East than you could ever fathom.</p>
<p>Hey, I remember you, you’re the dude who surfaced the day zaphod was kicked off cc!</p>
<p>“Fair use allows brief excerpts, e.g., a sentence or two, from copyrighted material for the purposes of review and commentary; please do not post massive excerpts from any source.” </p>
<p>If you can not understand the previous sentence, I hope you are not an English teacher.</p>
<p>First, the First Amendment does not give one the right to infringe on copyright laws. Second, College Confidential is not a free speech zone as evidenced by the brief suspension of Zaphod from this site. Don’t preach to me about free speech, I believe you are the individual who prompted Zaphod’s suspension.</p>
<p>Apparently, you do not really understand the rights granted by the First Amendment. I hope you are not a Government teacher.</p>
<p>In the current issue of Army Times there is a strongly-worded article demanding Rumsfeld’s replacement. Also, don’t miss “After Pat’s Birthday,” Kevin Tillman’s reflections on the war in Iraq. Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002 and they served together as Rangers.</p>
<p>The Subtle Upside of Terror
A Prairie Home Companion
With Garrison Keillor
October 24, 2006 </p>
<p>We are engaged in a struggle between freedom and the forces of terror, my little macacas, and mostly I side with freedom, such as the freedom to look at big shots and stick out your tongue and blow, but of course terror has its place too. The dude strolling down our street at night does not break into our house to see what’s available because he is terrified that if he’s nabbed, his girlfriend Janine will run off to Philly with her ex-boyfriend Eddie who’s been hanging around. She’s the best thing in Benny’s life right now. So he walks on by and leaves our stereo be…</p>
<p>Did anyone see the Fox special last night about how much the Islamic Extremists really hate America. Unfortunately I tuned in late, but the few minutes of “Death to America!” was enough! </p>
<p>They will accept no “talks”, no diplomacy, no compromise. They want us destroyed and are massively & ardently indoctrinating their children toward this end. I wish MSM would air more stuff that shows how vehemently we are despised. It’s a Jihad, no doubt about it. Do you think we can appease anyone in that situation? America (some of it) needs to wake up and realize the enemy is at the door.</p>
<p>Or… you can go ahead and put your head back in the sand.</p>
<p>On my drive to work last week, I was listening to a story on NPR about apathetic college students who aren’t registered to vote, don’t participate in the political process, and don’t care too much about our government. It was a sad story in many ways. First, it reinforced what my college professor friends say about hordes of American university students who major in business–with financial gain as their singular focus. (We laughed because not too long ago, undergraduate business majors were at the bottom of the academic food chain–below recruited athletes.) Most importantly, the story pointed out that many college students fail to see any correlation between government and their lives. Has the Current Occupant failed to inspire the vast majority of American youth? On the other hand, the combination of the 2000 presidential election and voting irregularities in Ohio during 2004 seem to have disenchanted many adult voters too.</p>
<p>I don’t know about others, but my soph in college son drove home this past Fri to participate in early voting option in our state. It was very important to him to exercise his voting priviledge.</p>
<p>Could it be that some of today’s college students are feeling disenfranchised because of the environment they’re in??
Many colleges today have become bastions of Liberalism and continue to indoctrinate students toward that way of thinking. </p>
<p>I hate to see unsupported assumptions lead to gospel truths.</p>
<p>A review of the US Census department’s statistics on registered voters show that the percentage of registered 18-24 year olds has risen from about 40% in 1998 (Clinton) to 51% in 2004 (Bush). In fact it’s at it’s highest point since the last 60’s -early 70’s when the 18-24 registration rate hit its peak. </p>
<p>Although that information doesn’t support the conclusion about “Bush’s failure to inspire American youth” , there’s no need to dispair. All Bush Bashers need to do is create a new conclusion something like: Bush’s inemptness has prompted American youth to register in near record numbers in order to effect a change in our country’s leadership." </p>
<p>My college professor friends tell me there’s no need to let facts or figures get in the way of a great hypothesis.</p>