Posted on 04/13/2006 3:15:15 PM PDT by jmc1969
His PR staff should have advised against making the big fanfare over "major combat operations have ended" statement, because, to the normal person, it sounded like, "major combat operations have ended"...Rumsfeld and Cheney dismissively refering to "dead enders" didn't help either - it gave the impression that the war was wrapped up.
I didn't think so at the time, but I figured at least another year - now that we're into the fourth year, people justifyably feel they didn't get the whole story.
And if a satisfactory story doesn't come from the president, it's going to be supplied elsewhere - the MSM.
This was NEVER a secret.
Not here, but most people do not spend hours on the Web, particularly on this site. Most people get their news from TV. And when the admin. stages an elaborate announcement from the deck of a carrier, that's what most people are going to accept as reality. No one gets to the WH without understanding that basic fact of American life.
Seven or eight generals coming out against a SoD is news - it would have been with Reagan or Clinton or whoever. A "stay the course" or "he's doing a heckova job" type statement is not going to suffice, because people are now questioning the whole story.
Giving these liars ANY credence even by silence at ANY time does great damage to our National interests.
If the generals are traitors or liars or just partisans, the WH needs to confront this. If the WH lets it pass, and only says that "we stand by Donald Rumsfeld", this story is going to fester.
Major combat operations have ended. When was the last time we faced a tank, or more than a company of skirmishers?
Early in Clinton's first term there was a mass resignation of around 20 Flag officers in protest of Clinton's social experiments on the military...and it was not news.
The White House no more needs to confront these six self-aggrandizing weasels than Bush needs to meet with Cindy Sheehan a second time.
Rumsfeld and the White House just need to get on with the job.
Pausing to engage in silly arguments with a handful of disgruntled general officers to whom the MSM has given its megaphone is a complete waste of time and will only embolden the administration's critics.
Spend a bit of time watching what gets reported. One can find numerous examples of nationally carried speeches given by President Bush that the media then writes outright false articles and commentaries on for months.
As example, recall the statement of Iraq being an imminent threat. This was reported constantly, and it took 6 months of constant statements and arguments by the Whitehouse and various members of the staff before it came to a head and the NYT (to it's eventual credit) ended up writing a half page summary of statements made by Administration officials...which pretty definitively showed that the administration had made no such claim, and in fact, had consistantly stated the opposite of what thousands of newspaper articles and television reports had attributed to them and had refused to take correction for.
This goes on all the time.
Was it Maureen Dowd that wrote the opinion piece excoriating Bush for a statement in which she had in fact edited out the word "not" and replaced it with ellipses? For weeks nationally, columns were written echoing her claim.
How often on the television news do you see where they show the President or other senior official speaking, but don't even broadcast their speech, but rather simply report their characterization of what the official said?
Only a small fraction of people actually read articles as opposed to TV/radio. At least we are represented on radio.
As example, recall the statement of Iraq being an imminent threat. This was reported constantly....the NYT (to it's eventual credit) ended up writing a half page summary of statements made by Administration officials...which pretty definitively showed that the administration had made no such claim.
The intelligence at the time looked pretty dire. And I listened to Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N - I don't think I was the only one who thought, good lord, what are we waiting for? Are you saying that the admin HADN'T made the case for war? But that isn't the problem; most people are happy that Saddam was taken out with or without WMDs. But they were not prepared for the insurgency that followed. And this wasn't just MSM obscuring what was said. Even last year Cheney was on my TV saying that the insurgents were in their last throes..
Despite what politicians think, people CAN handle the truth, and are willing to make sacrifices for national security - look at all the rationing and double shifts at factories and sacrifice people made here in WWII. But when ON TV our leaders keep painting a rosier scenario than what is the case, not only are subsequent statements harder to believe (and despite our discussions here, the polls are consistenting indicating that the public doesn't believe the government anymore ~60%), but some begin to think the the admin. doesn't know what it's doing. And when generals who have been in Iraq start making public statements, can you blame them?
Was it Maureen Dowd that wrote the opinion piece excoriating Bush for a statement in which she had in fact edited out the word "not" and replaced it with ellipses?
Maureen Dowd??!!?? Who reads her? I don't think Sean Hannity worries about her overtaking him in whose opinions get heard...
When did we EVER see tanks or planes (except those deserted)? We can also argue that the Viet Nam War wasn't a war (technically, it was never declared as such - and most of our casualties were incurred by guerillas). How far do you think that argument will fly with most people? With 2000+ Americans killed and several times more wounded since the "end" of combat operations, most people would say we are still at war.
And people can handle that. What they can't handle is a government trying to downplay what the real costs are. A lot of things can be blamed on the MSM, but this ain't one of them.
I loved the new South Park mock of the press conferences. It had Bush explaining to a wildly excited pack what the First amendment was the other night. Hysterical with their mrpresidentmrpresidentmrpresident and utterly idiotic questions.
YOu keep spreading the LIE that our leaders have claimed this would be quick. That is NOTHING but a flat out LIE. Show ONE quote supporting your LIE.
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