In an attempt to understand the 34% or so of voters in this country who still approve of our pResident’s performance in office, yesterday I browsed the web site of the Free Republic, especially comments to Bush’s speech of 3-22, defending the Iraq War. Here is the
link to Freeper comments on the speech.
I found most of the comments entirely unenlightening, simply oozing with unconditional adoration of the “man”. I don’t mean that statement to be critical. After all, our expressed adoration of John Conyers and other Democrats isn’t always accompanied by the reasons why we feel the way we do about them.
But I did find one post that had more substance to it, and honestly, I would love to understand where this woman is coming from. See response # 41 to the above referenced link for Kimberly GG’s full comments. Here is the portion of her comments that I would like to dwell on:
What annoyed me the most about this press conference is the media's insistence of bringing up such negative topics. They ask about a bombing, the "censure", dead soldiers, and other benign topics. They craft their questions toward those things. Why not ask about how many Iraqis have been educated, how many families he has met with of fallen soldiers, in general, the successes? I'm so fed up with their reluctance to be positive.
The rest of her response was a rant about how unfair the press is to Bush. I couldn’t understand the context of those comments, and that’s a huge and separate issue, so I won’t go into that here.
Anyhow, if there are any Feepers reading this post, please tell Kimberly that I would love to hear her response to the following questions and comments:
1) You say that it annoys you when the media brings up negative topics. I don’t understand that. Isn’t the purpose of the news media to report the news? Do you feel that negative news shouldn’t be reported, and do you feel that this would be a free country if it wasn’t?
2) You refer to bombing, the “censure”, and dead soldiers as “benign topics”.
It is estimated that at least
33 thousand civilians have died in Iraq since the start of the war, most of them from bombing. Do you consider that benign?
I’m not sure what you mean by the “censure”, but perhaps you mean the attempts by the Bush administration to censure any news prior to the war that cast doubt on his rationalizations for the war, such as his totally
unfounded claim that Iraq had or would soon have nuclear weapons capability. Do you consider government censoring of counter arguments against their unfounded claims for war to be benign?
And what’s this about dead soldiers. Are you aware that since the start of this war, over
2,300 American soldiers have died, and over 16,000 have been wounded? Do you consider that a benign topic?
3) You ask why the media doesn’t ask about positive things, such as how many Iraqis have been educated, how many families of fallen soldiers Bush has met with, and the “successes” of the war. Perhaps the media didn’t ask much about those subjects because Bush had the opportunity to discuss those things during his speech.
But why don’t you take this opportunity to enlighten us on this subject. Tell us how many more Iraqis are now being educated, as compared to prior to the war. Tell us how many families of fallen soldiers Bush has met with. And tell us what are the successes of this war.
4) And after you enlighten us about all those positive aspects of the Iraq war, please tell us how you think that these positive outcomes compare with 33 thousand plus dead Iraqi civilians, 2300 plus dead American soldiers, $250,000,000,000 (and rising) additional
debt for our country, and
civil war in Iraq.
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