Northern Valley Beacon
Information, observations, and analysis from the James River valley on the Northern Plains----- E-Mail: Enter 'Beacon' in subject box. Send to: Minnekota@Referencedesk.orgFriday, October 21, 2005
Who's not getting it? The people or the press?
An AP story is running in South Dakota newspapers about South Dakotans' attitudes toward the war on Iraq, which about two-thirds of U.S. citizens regard as "Bush's Folly." The story claims that AP reporters went out and interviewed people, and the story is a report on those interviews.
In the version in Aberdeen's disgrace to journalism and insult to intelligence (we don't know how much of the story may have been edited out), the writer attempts to balance those opinions for the war and those against. Those for the war say they support it as part of the war on terrorism. Those against it think we have no business in Iraq, or, as one person commented, were for the war until it started going so badly.
What is starkly absent from the comments we read is any mention of the false premises that got us into the war: the WMDs and the linking of Saddam Hussein with Al Quaida. Nobody protested being lied to. That is puzzling.
Many people who are now against the war supported it when they believed what the Bushites told them about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's plans for terrorism. Quite a few of us found good reason to doubt those excuses at the time, but even we found it difficult to believe that our president would commit U.S. troops and have their lives blown away on phony pretexts.
Many people believed that some kind of sanction and intervention was needed to deal with the genocide that took place under Saddam. We had seen effective resolutions in Bosnia and Kosovo that did not take thousands of American lives. Although the conservative dips like to insist that those oppose the war in effect support Saddam, that is a symptom of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of what passes for conservatism today. Progressives have made clear time after time that they supported doing something about Saddam Hussein, but that they do not endorse the bumbling idiocy and the lies of the Bushites. George Bush has waged war on the most fundamental premise of morality.
It is difficult to read the AP accounts of what people think and believe that these accounts have not been tampered with if they do not bring up the lying and the deceptions, in addition to the non compos bumbling of the Bush gang.
Did the people not say anything in this regard? Or has the press in their necks of the woods not reported on the dishonesty and deception?
If the AP story is an accurate reflection of the thinking out there, boy, do the progressives have a job to do.
In the version in Aberdeen's disgrace to journalism and insult to intelligence (we don't know how much of the story may have been edited out), the writer attempts to balance those opinions for the war and those against. Those for the war say they support it as part of the war on terrorism. Those against it think we have no business in Iraq, or, as one person commented, were for the war until it started going so badly.
What is starkly absent from the comments we read is any mention of the false premises that got us into the war: the WMDs and the linking of Saddam Hussein with Al Quaida. Nobody protested being lied to. That is puzzling.
Many people who are now against the war supported it when they believed what the Bushites told them about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's plans for terrorism. Quite a few of us found good reason to doubt those excuses at the time, but even we found it difficult to believe that our president would commit U.S. troops and have their lives blown away on phony pretexts.
Many people believed that some kind of sanction and intervention was needed to deal with the genocide that took place under Saddam. We had seen effective resolutions in Bosnia and Kosovo that did not take thousands of American lives. Although the conservative dips like to insist that those oppose the war in effect support Saddam, that is a symptom of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of what passes for conservatism today. Progressives have made clear time after time that they supported doing something about Saddam Hussein, but that they do not endorse the bumbling idiocy and the lies of the Bushites. George Bush has waged war on the most fundamental premise of morality.
It is difficult to read the AP accounts of what people think and believe that these accounts have not been tampered with if they do not bring up the lying and the deceptions, in addition to the non compos bumbling of the Bush gang.
Did the people not say anything in this regard? Or has the press in their necks of the woods not reported on the dishonesty and deception?
If the AP story is an accurate reflection of the thinking out there, boy, do the progressives have a job to do.
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