Utterly amoral and utterly shameless. How else to describe the Bush Republican attack machine for trying to smear John Kerry's military record? This, from a president who pulled all the strings available to him to avoid service in Vietnam, and then barely showed up for the stateside duty he landed, along with garnering mediocre reviews from his superiors, losing his flying status, refusing to submit to drug testing (and why would that be, unless you knew you would test positive?).
For a good short side-by-side comparison of the military records of Bush and Kerry, CLICK HERE.
For an administration that's constantly braying about how it values our men and women in uniform, they sure seem to have few qualms about disparaging one when it suits their purposes. Of course, this is also the administration that outed a CIA agent out of political vindictiveness, so why should we be surprised?
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Friday, April 23, 2004
Draped in the Flag
I wonder how many of the soldiers you served turkey to in Baghdad on Thanksgiving are dead now, Mr. Bush? Maybe some of them are even in this picture that you don't want the American people to be able to see:
A policy adopted by the Pentagon during Daddy Bush's first Gulf War in 1991 prohibits news organizations from photographing caskets being returned to the United States. Allowing the public to see row upon row of these flag-draped coffins, they say, would be insensitive to the grieving families.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy confirms Bush's support for this policy: "In all of this, we must pay attention to the privacy and to the sensitivity of the families of the fallen, and that's what the policy is based on and that has to be the utmost concern."
Which is bullshit, of course. The names and faces of the fallen in Iraq are shown in the print and broadcast media every day--real names and actual faces. These images of coffins are completely anonymous. There are no names, no faces, no personal identification of any kind.
No, it's not for anyone's privacy that Bush wants these images suppressed. He wants them suppressed because he knows they are powerful in their stark simplicity. Oddly enough, it is the anonymity itself which helps lend them power, as the hearken back to our long collective visual memory, dating to Vietnam, World War II and beyond, of similar pictures of war. Vital human beings, soldiers, now reduced to silent flag-draped cargo.
This president who so loves draping himself in the flag, does not want us to see these images of flag-draped coffins of those who have died in the service of his ill-advised policies.
Oh, and woe to any who try to cross the Bush administration's censorship. The flag-draped coffin issue originally arose when the Seattle Times published a similar photograph on its front page last Sunday. That photo had originally been taken by Tami Silicio, a 50 year old American working in Kuwait for the Maytag Aircraft Corporation, a government contractor providing ground handling services for military air bases. She since has been fired from her job. For good measure, they fired her husband too.
Silicio says she shared the photo because she hoped it would portray the care and devotion with which civilian and military crews treat the remains of fallen soldiers. In return, she was squashed by the petty vindictiveness of the Bush administration.
A policy adopted by the Pentagon during Daddy Bush's first Gulf War in 1991 prohibits news organizations from photographing caskets being returned to the United States. Allowing the public to see row upon row of these flag-draped coffins, they say, would be insensitive to the grieving families.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy confirms Bush's support for this policy: "In all of this, we must pay attention to the privacy and to the sensitivity of the families of the fallen, and that's what the policy is based on and that has to be the utmost concern."
Which is bullshit, of course. The names and faces of the fallen in Iraq are shown in the print and broadcast media every day--real names and actual faces. These images of coffins are completely anonymous. There are no names, no faces, no personal identification of any kind.
No, it's not for anyone's privacy that Bush wants these images suppressed. He wants them suppressed because he knows they are powerful in their stark simplicity. Oddly enough, it is the anonymity itself which helps lend them power, as the hearken back to our long collective visual memory, dating to Vietnam, World War II and beyond, of similar pictures of war. Vital human beings, soldiers, now reduced to silent flag-draped cargo.
This president who so loves draping himself in the flag, does not want us to see these images of flag-draped coffins of those who have died in the service of his ill-advised policies.
Oh, and woe to any who try to cross the Bush administration's censorship. The flag-draped coffin issue originally arose when the Seattle Times published a similar photograph on its front page last Sunday. That photo had originally been taken by Tami Silicio, a 50 year old American working in Kuwait for the Maytag Aircraft Corporation, a government contractor providing ground handling services for military air bases. She since has been fired from her job. For good measure, they fired her husband too.
Silicio says she shared the photo because she hoped it would portray the care and devotion with which civilian and military crews treat the remains of fallen soldiers. In return, she was squashed by the petty vindictiveness of the Bush administration.
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Cheney Endorses Freedom to Sell Guns to Terrorists
At least that what he seems to be saying in his speech yesterday to the National Rifle Association convention. According to the news reports, Cheney blasted John Kerry for supporting various gun control initiatives over the years, including one that allows random federal inspections of gun dealerships.
OK, I happen to be in favor of strict gun control, but I recognize that there is a middle ground where reasonable people may disagree. To oppose legislation like this, however, seems totally unreasonable. Our entire commercial business code includes as part of its standard operating principles the idea of random unannounced inspections. Agricultural inspectors check out slaughterhouses, health inspectors inspect food production facilities and restaurant kitchens, weights-and-measures inspectors make sure the prices posted and the scales used in retail establishments are accurate, fire marshals and building inspectors make sure that structures are up to code.
These inspections are done to help ensure that our food is unadulterated, our buildings are sound, and that we are not being cheated. Believe it or not, businesses have been known on occasion to cut corners in ways that make their products less healthy, less safe and more dangerous. They may do it innocently, not having the time, resources or workforce to make sure things are done to a certain standard, or they may do it for unscrupulous reasons, a greed for more profits.
You know this is true.
Gun dealers are no different than anyone else. The vast majority are honest and diligent in their business practices. But there may be a few who are lax in making sure that the rules and regulations concerning the sale of guns are followed, and there may be a greedy, corrupt few who are tempted by the money to be made selling guns outside the regulatory system.
All the law says is that gun dealers should be in the same position as virtually every other business in the United States: to be aware that on occasion, someone will check to see that you are fulfilling the requirements to which you agreed when you received the license to operate your trade, to make sure that you are not selling to people with criminal records, and to ensure that all the weapons you have procured are accounted for either in stock or in sales records.
In short, to help ensure that you are not acting, either through laxity or design, as a conduit for criminals and terrorists to obtain weapons.
This is a well-established feature of our commercial code, Mr. Cheney. Perhaps you have not had to deal with it so much in heading such crony-capitalist companies as Halliburton, but for most businesses in the United States it is accepted, and our society enjoys safer food, buildings, transportation and fairer services because of it. There is no reason gun dealers should have a special exemption from having their businesses subject to inspection.
If you had your way with the Patriot Act, even the book buying habits of every American would be open to government inspection. Yet you want the vendors of weapons to be free from inspection!
And we're supposed to believe you take the 'war on terror' seriously?
OK, I happen to be in favor of strict gun control, but I recognize that there is a middle ground where reasonable people may disagree. To oppose legislation like this, however, seems totally unreasonable. Our entire commercial business code includes as part of its standard operating principles the idea of random unannounced inspections. Agricultural inspectors check out slaughterhouses, health inspectors inspect food production facilities and restaurant kitchens, weights-and-measures inspectors make sure the prices posted and the scales used in retail establishments are accurate, fire marshals and building inspectors make sure that structures are up to code.
These inspections are done to help ensure that our food is unadulterated, our buildings are sound, and that we are not being cheated. Believe it or not, businesses have been known on occasion to cut corners in ways that make their products less healthy, less safe and more dangerous. They may do it innocently, not having the time, resources or workforce to make sure things are done to a certain standard, or they may do it for unscrupulous reasons, a greed for more profits.
You know this is true.
Gun dealers are no different than anyone else. The vast majority are honest and diligent in their business practices. But there may be a few who are lax in making sure that the rules and regulations concerning the sale of guns are followed, and there may be a greedy, corrupt few who are tempted by the money to be made selling guns outside the regulatory system.
All the law says is that gun dealers should be in the same position as virtually every other business in the United States: to be aware that on occasion, someone will check to see that you are fulfilling the requirements to which you agreed when you received the license to operate your trade, to make sure that you are not selling to people with criminal records, and to ensure that all the weapons you have procured are accounted for either in stock or in sales records.
In short, to help ensure that you are not acting, either through laxity or design, as a conduit for criminals and terrorists to obtain weapons.
This is a well-established feature of our commercial code, Mr. Cheney. Perhaps you have not had to deal with it so much in heading such crony-capitalist companies as Halliburton, but for most businesses in the United States it is accepted, and our society enjoys safer food, buildings, transportation and fairer services because of it. There is no reason gun dealers should have a special exemption from having their businesses subject to inspection.
If you had your way with the Patriot Act, even the book buying habits of every American would be open to government inspection. Yet you want the vendors of weapons to be free from inspection!
And we're supposed to believe you take the 'war on terror' seriously?
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