[Rhodes22-list] Politics: Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence

[Brad Haslett]

Bill,



Friedman is a good author, I've read most of his books.  He obviously has a
"bug up his ass" over the reactions to the Kerry statement.  That's fine,
much of the country sees it differently.  Your party stands a good chance of
winning power in this election – no party in our system keeps it forever,
and that is a good thing.  Two years of Pelosi will make for an interesting
cycle in 2008.  Let's take another look at Mr. Friedman's op-ed.



November 3, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you're stupid. Yes, they do.

They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by



*Mangled quip?  Opinion.  The statement is consistant with Kerry making
derogatory comments on servicemen for four decades.*

* *


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.



*And President Clinton RAN to the draft office?  Re-read the constitution
Mr. Friedman.  The Commander in Chief is by law a civilian and prior
military service is not a requirement.*

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I
hope you will say to yourself, "They must think I'm stupid." Because they
surely do.

They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team's real and
deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by
hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry's mangled gibe at the president.



*Mangled gibe?  You are repeating yourself, Tom.*

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?



*Tommy Franks got as many troops as he asked for.  The 4th ID got stuck in
Turkey (politics) and couldn't get into the battlefield until weeks later
because of the backlog at the docks in Kuwaitt. Read the other Tommy's book.

*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 Rumsfeld's response to criticism that he
sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the
army you've got — get over it.



*That is frustrating, just as it was after Normandy when the hedgerows of
France bogged down the Army.  Our boys welded blades on the front of tanks
and plowed through.  As to Rumsfeld's comment, he's right.  Unfortunate, but
throughout the history of warfare that has been the case.  Friedman knows
that!

*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 we've been making it up — and paying the
price — ever since.



*Oh, and there isn't a vertable library of military histories about FDR and
WW2 that question his not anticipating the challenges?  He quotes three
books by authors with an axe to grind, and written before the battle is even
over.  Patience Dear Tom, history will determine who was right, not
journalists posing as historians.
*
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 they're fighting against with our gluttonous consumption of oil?
Sure, George Bush told us we're 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.



*Tom, we agree!  Bush followed the same pattern as Nixon, Ford, Carter,
Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.  He is asleep at the wheel about ending our
dependence on foreign oil.  Shame on all of them!
*
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.



*Tommy, Rove is not an elected official, he's a political hack.  Every party
employs them.  It is call "spin".  That is his job.  And exactly what does
he do differently than Howard Dean?
*
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 country's health, prove him wrong this time.

Let Karl know that you're 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.



*Unwinnable?  Ugly yes!  Tom, do you think my wife looks best in a dark
black burkka or the dark brown?  If this is unwinnable it's time to go
shopping.  Do you have a crystal ball?  Spare me some lottery numbers
brother!
*
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.



*Gee Tom, we agree on a lot of stuff!  Gerrymandering cuts both ways, and
yes, politics is polluted by money.  Pick your party.

*It means we're as stupid as Karl thinks we are.

I, for one, don't think we're that stupid. Next Tuesday we'll see.



*Yeah, we'll see.  There's a substantial number in the GOP who deserve
spanking for forgetting that a significant number in their base (like me)
are Reagan conservatives.  I won't miss them.  Bring on Nancy!  She'll teach
folks not to vote out of anger!***


On 11/3/06, Bill Effros <bill at effros.com> wrote:
>
> As long as Brad has got us all reading the New York Times, let's turn to
> today's Op-Ed page:
>
> Thomas Friedman has been a strong supporter of the Iraq war from the
> outset --
>
> Bill Effros
>
> Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence
> By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
>
>
> November 3, 2006
> Op-Ed Columnist
>
> George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you're stupid. Yes, they
> do.
>
> 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.
>
> Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I
> hope you will say to yourself, "They must think I'm stupid." Because
> they surely do.
>
> They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team's real
> and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by
> hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry's mangled gibe at the president.
>
> 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?
>
> 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 Rumsfeld's response to
> criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you
> go to war with the army you've got — get over it.
>
> 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 we've been
> making it up — and paying the price — ever since.
>
> 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 they're fighting against with our gluttonous consumption
> of oil? Sure, George Bush told us we're 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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 country's health, prove him wrong
> this time.
>
> Let Karl know that you're 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.
>
> 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.
>
> It means we're as stupid as Karl thinks we are.
>
> I, for one, don't think we're that stupid. Next Tuesday we'll see.
>
> Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
>
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