It was a propaganda coup of the first order, replete with adoring camera angles and wildly cheering multitudes, all conducted under a shroud of Stalinist press secrecy. Indeed, the administration and its media admirers seem to regard its very deceit of the public and the press a point of pride. Lost in the torrent of excited blither from small-screen news anchors and pundits was a fairly basic question: Why was the chief executive of the United States, an ostensibly democratic nation, skulking into Baghdad when we'd been told he was in Crawford, Texas? Why were we lied to?
"For security," of course. Sure, the mortars drop on Baghdad International with unerring frequency, and even George W. would rather not be blown to bits. Understandable enough. Of course, some of us might wonder how it came to be that an American President might have the unmitigated gall to embark on such a reckless, expensive, and tactically meaningless expedition for purposes of a blatant photo-op. An answer to such a question, if asked, would surely be slow in coming. Given the administration's success in framing public discourse (remember "you're either with us or against us" and Ari Fleischer's admonition to "watch what you say") serious questioning of any gesture, however meaningless, that purports to "support our troops" is pretty unlikely in the fawning U.S. media. Overseas, however, the reaction was less muted: "The Turkey Has Landed" was the sneering headline in London's Independent.
But important, if unasked, questions linger about a president who foregoes both taste and honesty in his advancement of his agenda – questions of integrity, character and ethics. They might be aptly summed up in a riposte posed to another Republican nearly five decades ago, Senator Joseph McCarthy, during his final days on Capitol Hill: "Finally, sir, have you no shame?"
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17283
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