Crescendo of Concern...(Eleanor Clift..Newsweek)

[RedEarth]

Crescendo of Concern

Americans want their soldiers home; Congress is getting angry about the conduct of the war. It’s time for Bush to start being frank about Iraq.

By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek

- There aren’t many sons and daughters of elected officials dying in Iraq. Army helicopter pilot Matthew Lourey might be the first. His mother, Becky Lourey, is a state senator in Minnesota and an outspoken opponent of the war. She and other family members tried to talk Lourey, who at 40 was nearing retirement from the military, out of signing up for a second tour. But even though he had doubts about the war, he felt duty-bound to return to the battlefield.


This is President Bush’s legacy. Mothers don’t want their children to join the military. Who would have thought that not even four years after 9/11 and the biggest surge of patriotism the country had seen in at least a generation, the military would be having trouble getting people to enlist. By taking the country into a war that we don’t know how to win and can’t afford to lose, Bush has squandered his second term and made Americans less safe and less economically secure.

Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum spent Memorial Day with the Lourey family. She voted against going to war with Iraq, and she objected to a provision tucked into Bush’s education bill, No Child Left Behind, that allows military recruiters into high schools for the first time. McCollum is no fan of the president, and when the White House called to offer her a seat on Air Force One to accompany Bush to Minnesota for a pep rally on the Medicare prescription drug program, she turned down the invitation. “I could hear my mother’s voice saying, don’t accept anything from a man you don’t really like,” she told NEWSWEEK.

Maybe it was the polls this week showing a crescendo of concern about the war. Six in 10 Americans now say some or all of the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq should come home. A belated blast of media attention on the so-called Downing Street memo, British minutes of meetings in the summer of 2002 about intelligence being “fixed” around the idea of regime change in Iraq, is raising questions about Bush’s credibility at a time when his optimistic pronouncements about Iraq are being tested. Washington insiders knew war was inevitable, but that’s not what Bush was telling the country or the Congress, and now that the war isn’t going well, members of Congress are angry at having been manipulated.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8258587/site/newsweek/

[izzie]

1. I think I have lived this all before.

Even the war reports are starting to sound the same.

[Warpy]

2. I know I've seen this reel of the movie before

Somebody wake that projectionist up!

When the Pentagon lied us into war against Vietnam based on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, that was a very grave mistake.

When the Pentagon lied us into war against Iraq based on forgeries, fantasies and outright lies, it is the beginning of a very bad habit.

The Pentagon needs a good housecleaning and some strict regulation to prevent cadres of ivory tower military theorists into lying us into more wars of corporate convenience.

Their shadow government, the NSA, needs to be disbanded. It's unconstitutional and any reason for its existence disappeared when the USSR did.

Only then can we start talking about getting our country back.

[ladjf]

3. The Army is having to pay signing bonuses of up to $40K.

What does that tell you? That we now have mercenaries fighting the Bush wars.

[longship]

4. My letter to Eleanor,

This is a repost from another thread. I think this is the correct tact to take with this.

Dear Ms. Clift,

I am writing you in the hopes of influencing the current, appalling state of
journalism in this country. This morning I read your June 17, 2005 article,
"Crescendo of Concern". Although obviously heart-felt, true, and good, it
ignores the big picture of the Downing Street Minutes. The Downing Street
Minutes are just the most recent abrogation by journalists to report the facts
surrounding the United States going to war against Iraq. Most regrettably,
this is part of a much larger problem of journalists systematically ignoring
this administration's excesses.

In no particular order, journalists stood by while

* an illegal war was justified on clearly fraudulent reasons.

* Constitutional rights were legislated away by the Orwellian-named
Patriot Act.

* international treaties were shredded, in particular those governing
the conduct of war.

* people were transported to third world countries so that they
may be tortured.

* prisons were established outside of our borders solely for the purpose
of removing them and their detainees from Constitutional protections.

* your own journalistic world was undermined by overt and direct White
House manipulation.

* corruption and abuse of power by a reckless majority became normal
procedures in both houses of our national congress.

* partisans flagrantly manipulated federal and local elections.

* a minority party who represent (over) half the populace was
demonized, ennervated, and relegated to holding meetings in dark
basement chambers.

There are many who hold journalists personally and professionally responsible
for this mess. Afraid to speak to the facts and challenge the distortions and
lies, journalists stood by and just let it all happen.

How much farther down the road to one-party oligarchy do we need to go? How
much longer do the people of this country have to suffer? How many more
thousands have to die? Pray tell, what event is sufficient to shock
journalists out of their dream-sleep?

We in the Blogosphere can no longer afford the luxury of waiting for you to
again assume your mandated responsibilities. Things have already gone too far.
We are actively taking on the mandate that journalists have set down.

Ms. Clift, I've seen you get tough and speak truth to power on many occasions.
Please harden yourself to the task and join us, or help us. We need you.

Thank you for all you've done in the past and good luck to you in the future.


Sincerely yours,

[AtTheEndOfTheDay]

5. Very well said.

Thanks for sharing that.

[katinmn]

6. I thought this was a balanced column

especially coming from a corporate news outlet, and given the angle, "a Crescendo of Concern," which was written for a broad swath of middle America and not us lefties.

She included:

Bush's sinking poll numbers
DSM
Angry Congress
Bush lied
Bi-partisan support for withdrawal

I'm going to offer praise rather than complaints.

I'll take this any day over WaPo's Milbank.

[omega minimo]

7. Bush? start? being FRANK?! LOL

:rofl:

Eleanor, you rock. Keep giving them genteel hell on McLaughlin Group. (And why was there no DSM "forum" segment on JMcL 6-17?)


:yourock:

[truthisfreedom]

8. remarkable that it is on the msnbc site. very interesting!