jdsmith – You’re asking for one hell of a diversion away from the topic of Vincent’s death and the infiltration of the Iraqi police by militant groups. But I’ll indulge you for a moment.
Handwringing and whining about how the media “hates us conservatives” completely disregards the actual very positive coverage throughout papers across the spectrum. It disregards the large number of newspapers with editorial policies that support the president, that endorsed him (and Republican candidates) in elections over the past many decades. It ignores that Republicans take up a huge amount of the radio airwaves with talk shows and with an entire Fox “News” network in which you can get whatever you want.
If you look at American opinion, it has only lately finally made some measureable shifts – perhaps the straw that broke the camel’s back was the Downing Street memos. Shifts in public opinion are not overnight things, but I sincerely doubt that it’s just itemizing of casualties that’s the problem. Casualties in wartime are not really a problem for Americans unless we think they’re unnecessary or unjustified casualties.
Did Bush make a good case for the war? Well, to be fair to the guy (seeing as how we Americans were hanging on his every word in the lead-up to the Iraq War), he ran with the WMD argument, the one that could be most directly tied to the safety of the American people.
People soaked that in and believed him, absorbed in all sorts of evidence that later on turned out not to be so. We heard all about secret meetings in the Czech Republic with a 9-11 terrorist, yellowcake in Niger, a “terrorist training camp” with a mockup of an airliner to be used by hijackers, “mobile WMD labs” in trailers, and so on. One by one, these fell apart. The whole WMD thing fell apart. Now powerline wants to tell us that the war wasn’t sold to us on the basis of WMDs and re-write history, but we’re not buying into it because we were there. A lot of people put their trust into the president on what, to most of us, is about as serious a decision as a president can make. Is the lesson on this that the press should just shut up and not let American people make up their own minds about things, or is the lesson that the president should: 1) trust the American people a bit more; 2) be more careful about getting into wars.
Over time, we also can see that other things ain’t adding up. How is it that if the war was all about WMDs, we didn’t have anywhere near enough troops to secure the WMD sites. Why weren’t we securing those sites? Why were we getting cute remarks from Rumsfeld about the looting and disorder in the streets? Why did we send troops straight to the Oil Ministry but skip the WMD sites? (If Powell of ‘Powell Doctrine’ fame is there, why are they utterly disregarding him? …)
And then there’s the “oil” thing. President Bush fills up his cabinet with a bunch of oil-industry insiders, many of whom have signed off on Bill Kristol’s Project for a New American Century manifestos. Talk about a great way to feed right into the worst suspicions of folks. It would be like putting Michael Jackson in charge of ensuring America’s kids don’t have hernias. And the suspicions aren’t just gradually coming out from the U.S. side … of course the Iraqis and all their neighbors aren’t exactly too cool with this either. And the Bush administration didn’t exactly bend over backwards to ensure the appearance of propriety was preserved with regards to Halliburton – it’s not just “media” when you get Republican stallwart companies like Raytheon aghast.
Over time, those of us who care about the “hearts and minds” part of the war weren’t terribly crazy about seeing people put into indefinite detentions, seeing people shipped out for torture in places like Syria, Egypt and others. Abu Ghraib was a disaster, but our reaction was far from comprehensive and Gen. Sanchez was caught out lying to Congress about what guidelines were in place and what he’d approved. Not punished, of course. We saw the White House counsel’s opinion in which he put the President above the law. We’re a free nation that respects the rights of people – that’s a strength, not a weakness, in the overall fight against deluded terrorists.
In the background, we also see consistent accounts from within the EPA and various other non-partisan government departments in which science is overruled in favor of what’s good for certain industries near and dear to the cabinet. Basic economic and accounting concepts are flipped upside down to make room for tax cuts that most benefit the top 1% wealthy. If Bush wants credibility with the press or with the public, he’s got a heck of a way of showing it. It’s drips and drops here and there, but like any pointillist painting a picture emerges from the drops that that the average American is perfectly capable of pulling together. If you’re a New Yorker, the broken promises of 9-11 recovery money are particularly clear – especially when you start seeing states like Idaho getting “port security” funds.
We also see a president who wants “yes” men – because your ass gets canned or sidelined mighty fast if you’re not “on message.” This ain’t just the media – this is general after general, and guys like Powell, O’Neill, Clarke and others whose only crime was not being “on message” when the administration was about to do yet another boneheaded thing. The Bush administration has also not shyed away from using the press to smear these guys.
So, if powerline wants to re-write history they can do that. However, the American people have gone through a long process of reviewing and listening and thinking. Bush has credibility problems, and he hasn’t done a lot to try to fix things up. I think a good view into the mind of the normal American is Jay Leno – a Republican who makes brilliant political jokes that resonate well with people who prefer to live life as common-sense, non-partisan Americans.
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