Ford Found Wanting
My major beef with the N&O is the bias in their news "reporting." But on occasion we must turn the guns onto Steve Ford, who runs the editorial pages. Besides having to skip over 3 editorials a day written in part by Ford, N&O readers must also endure a separate Ford piece, complete with picture, periodically.
Today's gem recycled the old arguments of the anti-Bush gang against our involvement in Iraq:
Yet, with his supposed WMD arsenal having been shown to be nothing more than a bogeyman that vanished when the lights were flipped on, Saddam scarcely was in position actually to put a hurting on us or our friends. So much for President Bush's main justification for launching a preemptive war.
No mention by Ford that previous administrations and many of Ford's beloved Democratic lawmakers had warned of the WMD threat, or that the overwhelming majority of foreign intel and UN estimates concluded that Saddam had WMD of varying lethality. It was only Bush who erred.
...the war we're now fighting against the Iraqi insurgency...
I did not protest too loudly when the N&O adopted the word insurgency just after major combat operations ended in Iraq. But now that the main tactic of the "insurgency" is to blow up innocent Iraqi citizens every day, they are terrorists and not insurgents. Ford should know better.
The United Nations was brought into play, but apparently just as a fig leaf.
If this was true, then we would have taken the first resolution and acted. But we spent months working (against the French and Russian ministers, some of whom were still profiting from oil-for-food kickbacks) to try to pass the second resolution, so clearly the involvement of the UN was no "fig leaf." And if anyone made the U.N. irrelevant in the argument, it was the U.N. itself and not the U.S.
The most aggravating thing about Ford's piece is when he uses a family friend and WWII veteran to exhibit despair over the lives lost in Iraq. Ford wonders whether we can achieve our goals in Iraq if the costs (in lives) get too high.
But remember that at the beginning of WWII we had no idea we would lose as many people as we did, and if we had presented the numbers of eventual dead to the American people prior to entering the war, I think they would have reacted with horror and ended our involvement. Read Rick Atkinson's "An Army at Dawn" to get a sense of how naive we were when our troops landed in North Africa as to the misery and death they would endure.
Ford's article concludes with: We'll honor our fallen heroes on Memorial Day no matter what, but how much sweeter to honor them in victory.
Two comments for you Mr. Ford (and you can reach him at sford@newsobserver.com).
First, we will honor our fallen heroes on Memorial Day no matter what. Period. End of sentence.
Second, the only way we will lose in Iraq is if you and your Bush-loathing friends in the media and in government succeed in convincing your readers that what we are doing in Iraq is not worthwhile.
Liberal Media Bias
Today's gem recycled the old arguments of the anti-Bush gang against our involvement in Iraq:
Yet, with his supposed WMD arsenal having been shown to be nothing more than a bogeyman that vanished when the lights were flipped on, Saddam scarcely was in position actually to put a hurting on us or our friends. So much for President Bush's main justification for launching a preemptive war.
No mention by Ford that previous administrations and many of Ford's beloved Democratic lawmakers had warned of the WMD threat, or that the overwhelming majority of foreign intel and UN estimates concluded that Saddam had WMD of varying lethality. It was only Bush who erred.
...the war we're now fighting against the Iraqi insurgency...
I did not protest too loudly when the N&O adopted the word insurgency just after major combat operations ended in Iraq. But now that the main tactic of the "insurgency" is to blow up innocent Iraqi citizens every day, they are terrorists and not insurgents. Ford should know better.
The United Nations was brought into play, but apparently just as a fig leaf.
If this was true, then we would have taken the first resolution and acted. But we spent months working (against the French and Russian ministers, some of whom were still profiting from oil-for-food kickbacks) to try to pass the second resolution, so clearly the involvement of the UN was no "fig leaf." And if anyone made the U.N. irrelevant in the argument, it was the U.N. itself and not the U.S.
The most aggravating thing about Ford's piece is when he uses a family friend and WWII veteran to exhibit despair over the lives lost in Iraq. Ford wonders whether we can achieve our goals in Iraq if the costs (in lives) get too high.
But remember that at the beginning of WWII we had no idea we would lose as many people as we did, and if we had presented the numbers of eventual dead to the American people prior to entering the war, I think they would have reacted with horror and ended our involvement. Read Rick Atkinson's "An Army at Dawn" to get a sense of how naive we were when our troops landed in North Africa as to the misery and death they would endure.
Ford's article concludes with: We'll honor our fallen heroes on Memorial Day no matter what, but how much sweeter to honor them in victory.
Two comments for you Mr. Ford (and you can reach him at sford@newsobserver.com).
First, we will honor our fallen heroes on Memorial Day no matter what. Period. End of sentence.
Second, the only way we will lose in Iraq is if you and your Bush-loathing friends in the media and in government succeed in convincing your readers that what we are doing in Iraq is not worthwhile.
Liberal Media Bias
posted by SCP at 5:04 PM
<< Home