BACKBONE in the BELTWAY?

by graysmoke


The White House press has finally shown some spine. This week's questioning of the White House propaganda secretary, Scott McClellan, is coming late in the game. This is the way they should have been questioning most of the rhetoric disbursed at these contrived press conferences. They are not designed by the architect to let the American public know what is going on but are the window dressing.

Karl Rove produced, branded, marketed and sold a politician name George W. Bush to the gullible voters in this country. He had a volunteer sales force to supplement the extremists and the party apparatus (political machine) and that sales crew was the media journalists that failed to do their job.

Now that is becoming clear even to the previously blind, that this politician has no leadership qualities or other competencies to handle the office Rove maneuvered him into, maybe the rediscovered reasons for having a free press in the nation, will deliver informative and factual data instead of the canned messages. The question though will be whether the nation can recover from all the damages after the end of this second term.


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See today's cartoon from one of my favorites, Tom Toles at the Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinion/toles.html?referrer=email

Non-Rhetoric

by graysmoke

This is part of another WP article and is of particular interest since it is about an Arizona marine.

QUOTE:

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- Shaded by a towering blue spruce in Wheeler Park stands a gray granite monument that honors this city's men and women who have died in combat from the Spanish-American War to, as the memorial reads, "Iraqi Freedom."
The name of Lance Cpl. Marty G. Mortenson was etched into the stone on the eve of Armed Forces Day in May. A month earlier, on April 20, Mortenson had been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq.

Lance Cpl. Marty G. Mortenson of Arizona was killed on his third tour.' --->

Just a few months before he died, Mortenson sent his mother an e-mail: I am really sorry about [forgetting] your birthday . . . I am so streesed out that it is really bring [ing] me down. . . . I have had so much on my mind . . . going off to war 4 the 3rd time isn't easy.
Mortenson was on his third tour -- his third pump, in Marine jargon -- in Iraq. He had spent his 20th, 21st and 22nd birthdays in Iraq. Before he left on his last tour, he told a friend in California: "It's like three strikes, you're out. I have a feeling I'm not going to come home."
A generation ago in the Vietnam War, grunts had to survive 13 months and then knew they were going home for good. But the nature of an all-volunteer military has changed deployments and expectations for America's troops.

Here's the link for the entire article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/04/AR2005070401025.html?nav=hcmodule

Back to Blogging/Mission Impossible

by graysmoke

Health issues have kept me silenced for about three weeks now, feeling well enough to try catching up.

Here's a paragraph from an article in the Washington Post that hasn't received much attention. I think it should get wider circulation and discussion.

Quote:
Almost to a man, the soldiers said they joined for the money -- a relatively munificent $300 to $400 a month. The military and police forces offered some of the few job opportunities in town. Even then, the soldiers were irate: They wanted more time off, air-conditioned quarters like their American counterparts and, most important, respect. Most frustrating, they said, was the two- or three-hour wait to be searched at the base's gate when they returned from leave.
The soldiers said 17 colleagues had quit in the past few days.
"In 15 days, we're all going to leave," Nawaf declared.
The two-dozen soldiers gathered nodded their heads.
"All of us," Khalaf said. "We'll live by God, but we'll have our respect."

You can read the entire article at this link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/09/AR2005060902245.html