Republicans love to wrap themselves in the American flag. GOP politicians love the military. If you are a critic of any GOP-promoted war, you are not a true American. Bush: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
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GEORGE W. BUSH and his supporters are past masters at impugning the reputations and patriotism of opponents, no matter how unimpeachable their reputations might be.
It was therefore amusing to watch the White House switch into reverse after Representative Jean Schmidt of Ohio lectured her congressional colleague, retired Marine Colonel John Murtha of Pennsylvania, about how ''cowards cut and run, Marines never do." White House spokesman Scott McClellan compared Murtha to the lefty filmmaker Michael Moore after Murtha suggested a six-month timetable pulling troops out of Iraq. House Speaker Dennis Hastert said that war critics would ''prefer that the United States surrender to terrorists who would harm innocent Americans," and, as usual, Vice President Cheney played the heavy.
When asked about Cheney's criticism, Murtha, a combat veteran, said: ''I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war and then don't like suggestions about what needs to be done." Murtha was referring to the fact that Cheney, who had ''other priorities" than fighting for his country, sought and received five deferments during the Vietnam War.
Then it dawned on the White House that, with the president's approval ratings in the cellar, perhaps it was not a good idea to launch personal attacks on such a man as Murtha, who has spent his congressional career backing and helping the military.
So, overnight, the rhetoric changed. From Bush in Asia to Cheney in Washington, Murtha became an honorable American -- misguided, perhaps, but no longer a coward or someone who wanted to have terrorists harm Americans. Schmidt, who appears not to have known who Murtha was, sort of apologized and had her remarks struck from the Congressional Record.
Letting up on Murtha didn't mean letting up on war critics, however. Cheney said that senators who suggested that he and the administration had manipulated prewar intelligence to fit their preconceived decision to invade Iraq were making ''one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city." This by the man who went back to the CIA again and again, leaning on them to find evidence to support an invasion of Iraq; this by an administration that spread a net of misinformation about Saddam Hussein-Al Qaeda links, a charge that the CIA refused to confirm but that Cheney kept making anyway (Greenway 1-2)
Work cited:
Greenway, H. D. S. “Bush's Patriotism Smear.” The Boston Globe, November 29, 2005. Net. http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/29/bushs_patriotism_smear/
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I was especially irritated by the following letter, in which the author. Tony Cavarno, took a shot at long-time liberal letter writer, Lucius Gent. Although we had never met, Gent had called me twice to thank me for letters I had written. He was a widower in his eighties. At the end of his last letter, prompting Cavarno’s response, Gent, an avowed critic of the Iraq War, had listed his World War II service record, no doubt to prove that critics of the Iraq war had also fought patriotically in wars. Here was Cavarno’s response.
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OK, enough is enough! Why do we seem to have to read articles from several of the same old people expounding the same old line time and time again? Possibly the Siuslaw News doesn’t have many subscribers and only a few write in, mostly malcontents? For those anti-Bush folks with letters you seem to publish constantly, please get over it! Bush won! Gore lost! I say again, please get over it – you may even feel better if you do.
Please also don’t keep dragging up body count of brave men and women that have given their lives in defense of a better way of life for others, and sounding like the proverbial broken record with the same old tired line of “lies” and “deceit” by our president. Incidentally, in regard to body count of U.S. military Iraq war dead, published weekly by the Siuslaw News, I wonder if that policy existed during WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, hmmm?
As it seems essential to establish credentials under one’s name to give credence, I guess, to their article, let me sign out as:
Tony Cavarno
Florence
20-year U.S. Marine Corps 1st Sgt.
Retiree, Korean and Vietnam War veteran,
Receiver of two Purple Hearts, no Bronze
Star as some, but holder of 18 Citations,
Badges, Combat Awards and Ribbons
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Here was my response to Cavarno’s letter.
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Your July 13 letter, Mr. Cavarno, was mean-spirited. Limit your remarks to what you consider factual. Counter what others write that you believe is unfounded. A war veteran citing his military record to disprove the administration’s stereotype that liberals aren’t patriotic does not deserve anyone’s sarcasm.
As to your assertions of fact, ...
Election fraud strikes at the heart of any nation’s democracy. Felon lists that erroneously disenfranchise thousands of opposition party voters, touch screen voting machines designed to leave no paper trail, vote switching, eight hour lines at polls to eliminate a high turnout of voters favoring the “wrong” party – these are recent election day practices that nobody should “get over.”
“Lies and deceit, ... the proverbial broken record.” You may be tired of reading what we write, but those lies were told and fair-minded people that receive most of their information from right wing talk radio and/or network and cable television need to be stimulated to discover on their own what is fact.
On the subject of body counts, to ignore the specific costs of conducting a war is to discredit the “brave men and women that have given their lives” to defend what we Americans hold dear. Body count reminders are especially important when the reasons given for sending our soldiers to war hide actual, unacceptable ideological, economic, and imperialistic motives.
As for casualty reports being a recent development, my wife as a young girl saw weekly pages of photographs in the Cleveland Plain Dealer of metropolitan area World War II servicemen killed, injured, captured, and missing in action.
Printed July 16, 2005, in the Siuslaw News
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Katrina occurred and Bush provided traitor letter writers like me additional fodder for criticism.
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First the bull.
“I don’t think anyone could have predicted that the levees would give away.” -- George W. Bush
“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” -- George W. Bush
“Some people are really very anxious to start pointing fingers and playing the blame game.” -- Dennis Hastert
“For centuries, charlatans have been telling Americans that the government can provide, will provide and you deserve to be provided for. Bull.” -- Bill O’Reilly
“What we’ve seen in New Orleans is first and foremost the utter failure of generation after generation after generation of the entitlement mentality.” -- Rush Limbaugh
“The governor failed to call the emergency. And initially, it was the governor who had to call an emergency.” -- Newt Gingrich
Now the truth.
“This is about the real consequences of what governments do and not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.” -- Molly Ivins
“Throughout the Bush II years, how many of us have thought in less dramatic moments ‘I can’t believe this is America’?” -- Ellen Goodman
“The truth is the people who suffer the most from Katrina are the very people who suffer the most every day.” -- John Edwards
“What we see here is a harvest of four years of complete avoidance of real problem solving and real governace in favor of spin and ideology.” -- John Kerry
“It’s time to end the impunity of President George W. Bush.” -- Norman Solomon
Printed September 30, 2005, in The World
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