OUT OF THE LOOP
Red Truth and Blue Truth
BY JOHN S.TULLY
THE LOS ANGELES SUN
August 2004
John Kerry is really making a mess of this war in Iraq.
He brought this on himself after all, by completely screwing up the entire month of August. The Senator accused his fellow soldiers in Vietnam of torture and heinous acts while he bragged and boasted about his own alleged service.
Then he went windsurfing!
Wasn’t he a snowboarder just this past winter?
Make up your mind Mr. Kerry.
The liberal elite media won’t inform the people, as the president gladly did this week, that the “right track/wrong track” polling numbers are actually better in Iraq than here in America. Those people are dealing with kidnappings, hostage-taking, beheadings and car-bombings yet they are optimistic for the future and answer pollster’s questions.
It’s going to take the long lens of time to understand what really happened on the ground during the liberation of Iraq. History will be the final judge, so it’s best to continue on this path of unexamined patriotism, at least until the war on terrorism is over. If you want to take umbrage with President Bush, wait for about thirty years. After all, these people started it.
As usual, the Democrats are best at criticizing themselves, so they’re keeping Kerry on his feet and scared. After Zell Miller (and Karl Rove) eviscerated the Senator for being a weakling on security and defense, the talking heads, pundits, and subpar speculators in the lazy press started writing his obituary.
Even Cokie Roberts and Howard Fineman were plain old baffled at how poor a candidate Kerry was, and they know things. It seems that the candidate just doesn’t “get” the voters. Deep thoughts from the ®Cool Kids Media Club: “Who is John Kerry?”.
An English person named Katty Kay from the BBC said on a television program called “The Chris Matthews Show” that the Kerry and Edwards speeches at the Democratic convention were the only ones of any note. Clarence Page looked stunned. The British are very smart you know.
During August, the bloodiest month yet for the soldiers and Marines in Iraq, with combat injuries reaching 1100, CNN spent about fifteen minutes an hour on the Swift Boat Veterans. This month it’s as bloody as ever and they’ve got fifteen minutes an hour on IBM Selectric typewriters.
Robert Novak, the syndicated columnist, wants Dan Rather and CBS to reveal their document sources. The Dems just can’t win for trying.
The intellectuals stammered something faint about ill-prepared troops, lack of exit strategy, and a 25,000 page Army War College /CIA/ State Department plan for the war. More left-wing nuanced goo-gah; freedom, liberty and democracy aren’t always a walk in the park folks, and this is a messy business.
Should we have guarded the ammunition dumps?Youbetcha’!Was there a complete lack of intelligence and a credible plan for war?Sure!Were we forced to funnel resources and troops out of Afghanistan to mount the war in Iraq thereby leaving Osama Bin Laden uncontested at Tora Bora?Hey!….scram kid!
The oxygen-loving lefties claim the president has used 9/11 as a pretext to get his legislation through Congress and point to rollbacks of various EPA regulations, corporate tax breaks, and drug company profits during his term. Protest, dissent, and hand wringing don’t make us safer.
Tell that to the Cassandras at the CIA, whose National Intelligence Estimate about the long-term outlook for Iraq was leaked this week. The best-case scenario for the country was described as “tenuous stability”. These naysayers and naer-do-wells squawk about “civil war” yet they got the 9/11 attack and Iraq’s weapons capability completely wrong. Why should we believe them now? The President rightly called it just “a guess”.
Tell that to the Cassandras at the CIA, whose National Intelligence Estimate about the long-term outlook for Iraq was leaked this week. The best-case scenario for the country was described as “tenuous stability”. These naysayers and naer-do-wells squawk about “civil war” yet they got the 9/11 attack and Iraq’s weapons capability completely wrong. Why should we believe them now? The President rightly called it just “a guess”.
Republican doomsdayer Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said this week that Iraq was “beyond pitiful, beyond embarrassing, now in the zone of dangerous”. What did he think would happen, that we’d be greeted as liberators, with flowers thrown at us?
Perhaps General Jay Garner was correct so very long ago when he advocated quick elections and a hasty withdrawal. But this is George Bush’s war and once you take your hands off the bible you’re the Commander-in-Chief, boss.
If we’ve squandered our credibility and destroyed relationships with other countries when we need their help with the global war on religious fundamentalism, too bad, so sad. France and Germany were making money over there the whole time and besides, aren’t we all safer with Saddam in a jailcell?
It’s Fallujah or Cleveland buddy, so fire up Ebay and pass the Freedom Fries. It’s a fabulous disaster and a catastrophic success.
2004 ©THE LOS ANGELES SUN
