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Sunday, May 15, 2005 - An astonishing message came forth on May 12, 2005 from ABC News political unit’s The Note. I shall quote verbatim from Mark Halperin and his associate editors: "We say with all the genuine apolitical and non-partisan human concern that we can muster that the death and carnage in Iraq is truly staggering. And/but we are sort of resigned to the Notion that it simply isn’t going to break through to American news organizations, or, for the most part, Americans."
"Democrats are so thoroughly spooked by John Kerry’s loss - and Republicans so inspired by their stay-the-course Commander in Chief - that what is hands down the biggest story every day in the world will get almost no coverage. No conflict at home = no coverage."
How to respond? There are several ways. First, ABC is right in saying there is no opposition Party on the Iraq war - as a Party. From the Democratic National Committee to the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate, the party line is "wish Bush success, support the troops to die and destroy in Iraq, and keep voting $80 billion or more a year for that illegal quagmire which is breeding more terrorists and is turning the world against Washington." That is not exactly the way the Democrats are verbalizing their position, but that is what they are doing and what they are thinking in private conversations, whatever the semantic gloss they are applying.
The Democrats are taking this prolonged dive in spite of a growing majority of Americans wanting out of Iraq, now believing it was a mistake to invade Iraq (since there are no WMDs or al-Qaeda connections), and even larger majorities do not think the war-occupation is worth the price in human casualties and taxpayer dollars needed here at home. Moreover, most of the retired Generals, Admirals, diplomatic and intelligence officials were against this war of choice from the beginning as being against our national security interests.
What more do the Democrats need to take a stand, to demand a responsible exit strategy with a timetable so as to give Iraq back to the Iraqis and pull the bottom out of the resistance? Well, what about massive corruption and waste by the Halliburtons and other corporations ripping off Uncle Sam and you the taxpayers. Maybe the Democratic leadership should pause in their incessant fundraising from corporate interests and read the daily documentation of this corruption and waste by their own Cong. Henry Waxman (D-CA) (see www.democrats.reform.house.gov/investigations.asp?Issue=Iraq
=Reconstruction).
And what about Bush not supporting the troops - first by putting them in harm’s way with an illegal war, then not providing them with adequate body armor and vehicle armor (outraging military families in their grief), then cutting their health benefits and other services when they come back home?
And what about the first President in U.S. history deliberately lowballing U.S. casualties so as not to further arouse public opposition to his war crimes. American men and women injured, sickened or severely mentally traumatized in Iraq, but not in actual combat, are not counted in the casualty toll. Tens of thousands not counted disrespecting them and their parents.
What else do the Democrats need to jettison their chronic cowardliness? Well they can sign on to Cong. House Congressional Resolution 35, urging Bush "to develop and implement a plan to begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Iraq. Led by Rep. Lynn Woolsey and about 30 other Democrats, the Party can at least take this modest step.
Or they can hold Senator John W. Warner (R-VA), Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC) to their strong determination last year to hold anyone culpable for torture at Abu Ghraib and other prisons accountable, no matter how senior. Torture policies, lack of proper supervision from the top of the Bush regime, ignoring information brought to their attention by human rights groups have ranged from Guantanemo to Iraq to Afghanistan, repeated documentation demonstrates. This is a no-fault, out of control Bush government. Yet the Democratic Party sleeps.
Still, is ABC’s excuse wholly understandable? Can’t this and other networks do much more to investigate what has been going on and then ask the Democrats when they interview them about their findings? Can’t the networks provide more coverage to the conflict represented by the dissenting military families, by the coalitions of labor, religious, civic, veterans and other groups (see Veteransforpeace.org and DemocracyRising.US).
These same networks certainly did not show such inhibitions when they went out of their way day after day to hoopla the coming invasion of Iraq and not question the unsupported claims for going to war by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell. The networks in varying decrees were either cheerleaders or ditto machines.
Passing the buck can be very costly to the American people’s right to know - in time.
Forum posts
19 May 2005, 07:38
Folks may be asking why the democrats can’t seem to do anything but cuddle up to the Occupation Administration. If you are a democrat you must be feeling a combination of sheepishness and angst as power slips away without so much as filibuster. To expect any legitimate soul-searching or even an iota of recalcitrance is to overlook the very nature of the problem: The democratic party is the party of the status-quo, plain and simple. How can change be embraced by a structure that caters to the perpetuation of the perception of well-being? The goal of politics is to synchronize human behavior. We are always subjected to the manipulative influences of the political machines in order to guide the thinking that motivates the desired behaviors. All the tools of mental manipulation are brought to bear on producing the desired outcome — be it policy, social acceptance or cultural adaptation.
The occupationists are not bound by the social nice-ities that underlie the status-quo. It is that very characteristic that gives momentum to their arrogance, bigotry and disruption amid the queasy unease that grips the passive observer used to the predictability of things. Chaos and instability are not the tools of an establishment which is dedicated to minimizing the violence that accompanies any change to the status-quo. Even if the party of no-change has relinquished the levers of power, it remains the party of no-change. How can we expect a credible opposition to emerge when the very leadership is invested in maintaining the appearance of a smooth running government? This bias for complicity is highlighted when someone who is really at odds with the situation (e.g. Galloway) stands and delivers the egg to the faces of the occupationists and their Mort Meek minions aka democrats.
The success of real deconstruction is measured in silence. To negate spin with truth requires more than courage — it requires understanding. Why don’t the democrats understand that? It is not their job! Are the new progressives (neo-progs) any different than the old progressives? Are the new conservatives (no, I won’t call them what they want) any different than the old conservatives? (Nixon-Agnew anybody?)
The simple fact is that human beings rely on consciousness to define their identities. That means information is the real medium of exchange. Believe it or not, no matter what you may think, you are a prisoner of your own thoughts. What could be worse than to give up something real — like life — for something unreal — like ideology? It happens every day on all sides of every issue! Too bad for us!
19 May 2005, 08:28
Nixon/Agnew conservatives...NIX-CONS! Hey pass the rubber gloves! (Ten grand sounds a little like Dr. Evil in 1972!) Oh, pardon me...200 Billion Dollars! Now that’s more like it!
17 June 2005, 17:41
Experts have found that the ceramic tile used in U.S. Military Vehicles is sub-standard. The claim of these experts: American fighters are needlessly being placed at risk in Iraq and Afghanistan because of defective armor.
It would seem that conventional ceramic tile cannot stand against the IED threat (improvised explosive devices) which is a major problem in the Iraqi theater. In the first two months of this year, roadside bombs accounted for 56 percent of all battle deaths. In the final four months of 2004, they accounted for 19 percent, according to Pentagon figures.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "It’s an ongoing battle, and this IED threat has migrated from Iraq to Pakistan to Afghanistan, and as long as we are fighting the enemies that we’re fighting in the connected manner that they are fighting the battle, we’ll see it continuing to migrate."[1]
From General Abizaid’s words, it might be assumed that the US Army is waiting for an improved armor solution, yet the more newsworthy development is there already exists a revolutionary new armor solution that has already been selected by the United States Marine Corps as the armor, which will be used on the EXPEDITIONARY FIGHTING VEHICLE (EFV). This same solution was hastily used to replace the frontal armor on the Stryker Brigades when in testing the conventional tile armor failed against the type of ammunition that is in use today.
This EFV armor, which has proven itself in combat around the globe, has been hailed by ballistic engineers and military program managers as certified by the National Law Enforcement Corrections Technology Center in Rockville, Md, as being the finest armor available today.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, such armor was used on vehicles to safely evacuate wounded soldiers under fire in the midst of an ambush where 12 other soldiers had been killed in a bloody firefight.
Strangely, this armor has yet to be placed on the critical crew compartment of the Stryker vehicles going into service in Iraq.
The truth is that such armor is being kept in the drawer for future use. The reasons for this are two fold; first, to retro-fit this armor on the vehicles already in the field would be to admit that the US Department of Defense had made a mistake in hastily choosing the original ceramic tile design when a superior armor was already proven and tested on marine combat vehicles (and no one wanted to take credit for this failure in planning) and secondly, the less capable armor was a German armor design, assembled in Canada, and to change the full armor design could lead to stopping production lines in neighboring countries (never a politically acceptable thing to attempt).
The present plan of the US Army is to slowly, over the next few years, quietly phase out inferior armor and to gradually replace it with the new solution.
The obvious question that must be asked is why is the armor, which has proven itself to be far superior to the present tile solution, not being used on the entire vehicle? Why do the decision-makers continue to install inferior armor on the very areas of the vehicle, which must protect our most valuable assets, our men and women who are fighting for our country?
The question that no one could answer was why the Department of Defense and the US Army do not test the new armor which is presently available, and, based on objective testing, then make the best choice in order to protect US soldiers. Until and unless this happens, there will always remain the unanswered question: did we the US military establishment do its very best to protect its fighting men and women in the field?
[1] The Associated Press March 2, 2005. General says Pentagon must do more to stop roadside bombings in Iraq.—By Robert Burns; AP Military Writer