Another US soldier has died in Iraq. For what? There is no good answer. No, they went too far and then they just kept going...It wasn't supposed to turn out this way...According to Rove's script, the US electorate was supposed to be awash in triumpalism by now, we were suppose to be marching in lock step behind our young warrior king, yes, flush with our tax cut money in our pockets, busily building a new empire, waiting for the word from Sean Hannity on whether we should *liberate* in Syria or Iran next, clutching our Ann Coulter dolls and queing up to see Mel Gibson's Passion oF Christ *again* -- BUT instead, on Capitol Hill, the GOP focus is on the Cheesburger bill (i.e. protecting fast food chains from consumer law suits) and public hearings on steriod use in major league baseball, while the White House sorts out its initiatives on Mars, "gay marriage" and oh yes, steriod drug use in major league baseball. (BTW, when will someone in the "US mainstream news media" or the
US Just Us Dept. challenge Conan the Deceiver on steriod use in body-building? The Sacremento Bee (3/6/04) reports, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former
bodybuilder and Hollywood superstar, has another
paying job to add to his résumé: magazine editor.
The Republican governor will serve as executive editor
of a pair of magazines - Muscle & Fitness, and Flex -
run by supermarket tabloid owner American Media Inc.,
spokesman Rob Stutzman confirmed Friday.
Schwarzenegger's new job will be announced officially
today in Columbus, Ohio, where he is taking a break
from his political duties for the weekend to host the
annual "Arnold Classic" bodybuilding competition.)
No, it was not supposed to turn out this way at all...
Sidney Blumenthal, Guardian (UK): "They have been
shown to trash anyone, anywhere, anytime," Cleland
told me. "They seek to slander a noble veteran's
record who was wounded and the only member of his
division in the navy who won a silver star. Use 9/11?
Have they no shame? Listen, John Kerry knows that the slime machine is targeting him and his family. We discussed this before the race. Somebody's got to fight. That's the way it's turning out, the band of brothers against the slime machine."
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1166865,00.html
Squandering the trauma of September 11: Having failed to create consensus, Bush is left with a negative campaign
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday March 11, 2004
The Guardian
"Lucky me, I hit the trifecta," said George Bush in
the immediate aftermath of September 11, according to
his budget director. War, recession and national
emergency liberated him to soar in the political
stratosphere. But after several faltering starts this
year, he felt compelled to relaunch his campaign with
$4.5m (£2.5m) of television advertising in 16 key
states. In 60-second commercials he would lock the
sequence of recent history into the American mind, his
narrative of his presidency as he wished it to be
understood. Images of September 11 cascaded across the
screen, firemen carrying a flag-draped coffin at
Ground Zero juxtaposed against another firefighter
raising the flag. Bush's slogan: "Steady leadership in
times of change".
"Where the hell did they get those guys?" responded
the president of the International Association of Fire
Fighters. It turned out that the firefighters in the
ads were hired actors - "cheaper and quicker", as a
Republican party spokesman explained. Enraged members
of the 9/11 Widows and Victims' Families Association
described them as "disgraceful" and "hypocritical".
While he used the flag-draped 9/11 coffin, he refused
to allow the press to photograph coffins of US
soldiers returned from Iraq. What's more, he was
"stonewalling" the official 9/11 commission, as
Senator John Kerry put it, holding back documents,
refusing to allow the national security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice, to testify in public, and limiting
his own testimony to an hour.
A few weeks earlier, Bush had remarked: "I have no
ambition whatsoever to use [the 9/11 attacks] as a
political issue". Now an administration spokesman
defended his ads as "tasteful". After Bush's ads ran,
an Oklahoma Republican congressman, Tom Cole, stated
the rank-and-file's political conventional wisdom: "I
promise you this, if George Bush loses the election,
Osama bin Laden wins the election. It's that simple."
But firefighters and victims' families are critics he
cannot debate. And the judgment of public opinion has
been a terrible, swift sword. Some 54% said his use of
9/11 imagery was inappropriate, and only 42% - his
base - said it was appropriate, according to the
Washington Post-ABC News poll. Worse, Kerry has
plunged ahead. Even worse, 57% want a "new direction".
The rejection of the central element of Bush's version
of his story is an unexpected shock to him and the
Republicans. "I am amazed they have been thrown on the
defensive," James Pinkerton told me. Pinkerton was
research director for George Bush senior's 1988
campaign and responsible for developing the attack
lines against the Democratic opponent. "They weren't
ready for any of it," he says of this Bush campaign.
"They just assume it's all pro-them on 9/11. It didn't
dawn on them it cuts different ways. If they aren't
ready for this, what are they ready for?"
The trauma of September 11 has been squandered as a
political factor. Just as Bush has misspent the
goodwill of the world, he has wasted his opportunity
to create any consensus at home. He had planned to run
his campaign on the Bismarckian formula of the primacy
of foreign policy and Kulturkampf. But his trifecta
has been turned upside down: David Kay's confession
that "we were all wrong" on WMD in Iraq; job
stagnation; increased recriminations about 9/11 as the
commission begins its work in earnest. Bush, moreover,
is patently using 9/11 not for "changing times" but to
advance his reactionary social agenda. Rather than
appearing "steady", he is setting himself against
change, including changing his own policies. What he
has left is a negative campaign. If he cannot elevate
himself on the presidential pedestal he must throw
himself into the abattoir of the culture war.
For decades, the Republicans used Vietnam to cast the
Democrats as soft on communism. But the war hero
trumps the national guardsman who went absent without
leave. Kerry's most fervent campaigner is former
Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam.
Cleland was defeated in a race in 2002 when the
Republicans ran a TV ad conflating his picture with
Saddam Hussein's and Osama bin Laden's. Cleland is the
personification of more than Kerry's war bona fides;
he is the living witness to negative Republican
tactics.
"They have been shown to trash anyone, anywhere,
anytime," Cleland told me. "They seek to slander a
noble veteran's record who was wounded and the only
member of his division in the navy who won a silver
star. Use 9/11? Have they no shame? Listen, John Kerry
knows that the slime machine is targeting him and his
family. We discussed this before the race. Somebody's
got to fight. That's the way it's turning out, the
band of brothers against the slime machine."
· Sidney Blumenthal, author of The Clinton Wars, is
Washington bureau chief of www.Salon.com.
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