Back in the saddle again

Please excuse me from veering from my plan to record the 2004 campaign (from my perspective). I've had other things on my mind. If politics is indeed local, then my local interests have overshadowed the national ones.

But, on to the comments.

In the past few weeks, the rhetoric has gotten completely off the wall, and sounding more and more like 1968 than at any time I can remember. The Republicans have pulled out the "terrorists want John Kerry to be elected president." I have even seen some bumper stickers lately displaying that sentiment. I can only assume that Kerry's (it's about time) putting more emphasis on the Iraqi Incursion is having some affect in the polls. Otherwise, the Republicans would just cruise along with the "flip-flop" campaign.

Please explain to me how very sensible, very intelligent Republicans - and there are some - can tolerate what is going on with the country and the government. This is a very dangerous time, and where fascist ideas have substance (Patriot Act), we should be very nervous about giving up our civil liberties.

But I digress.

Here is an excellent analysis from the Washington Post:

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 24, 2004; Page A01

President Bush and leading Republicans are increasingly charging that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and others in his party are giving comfort to terrorists and undermining the war in Iraq -- a line of attack that tests the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.

Appearing in the Rose Garden yesterday with Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, Bush said Kerry's statements about Iraq "can embolden an enemy." After Kerry criticized Allawi's speech to Congress, Vice President Cheney tore into the Democratic nominee, calling him "destructive" to the effort in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism.

It was the latest instance in which prominent Republicans have said that Democrats are helping the enemy or that al Qaeda, Iraqi insurgents and other enemies of the United States are backing Kerry and the Democrats. Such accusations are not new to American politics, but the GOP's line of attack this year has been pervasive and high-level.

• On Tuesday, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said terrorists "are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry." On Fox News, Hatch said Democrats are "consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there."

• On Sunday, GOP Senate candidate John Thune of South Dakota said of his opponent, Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle: "His words embolden the enemy." Thune, on NBC's "Meet the Press," declined to disavow a statement by the Republican Party chairman in his state saying Daschle had brought "comfort to America's enemies."

• On Saturday, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) said at a GOP fundraiser: "I don't have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another, [but] I would think they would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops." Asked whether he believed al Qaeda would be more successful under a Kerry presidency, Hastert said: "That's my opinion, yes."

• The previous day in Warsaw, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said terrorists in Iraq "are trying to influence the election against President Bush."

Such accusations have been a component of American politics since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and surfaced in the modern era during the McCarthy communist hunt and the Vietnam War protests.

"Rhetoric this sharp and ugly is not by any means brand-new," said Jeff Shesol, a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and author of a book about Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy. "What we're seeing now isn't just offhand comments by outliers but clearly a decision by the Republican hierarchy to put this charge out there consistently."

Pollster Frank Luntz, who has advised Republicans on rhetoric, cautions that "statements like that can cause a backlash" against the accuser. "Candidates have to be careful of going over the line," he said.

Earlier this month, Cheney provoked an uproar when he said that on Election Day, "if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating" and that the United States would not respond vigorously. Cheney later said that he was not suggesting the country would be attacked if Kerry were elected. But a few days later, he said: "We've gone on the offense in the war on terror -- and the president's opponent, Senator Kerry, doesn't seem to approve."

The White House and the Bush campaign said they would neither endorse nor disavow the remarks by Hastert, Armitage and others. "Those statements speak to the great concern many people have about John Kerry's consistent vacillation under political pressure on the most significant issues the nation faces with regard to the war on terror," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan had no quarrel with the remarks. "They are expressing their opinion," he said.

The Kerry campaign, which previously branded Cheney's accusations "un-American," extended that complaint to Bush's remarks yesterday.

"Not only is it un-American, it's un-democratic the way they attack your patriotism when you tell the truth about Iraq," Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton said. "It's called an election, and people deserve an honest debate."

Responding to Hastert and Cheney's remarks, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said yesterday: "These despicable comments cross the line from partisan politics to shameless fear tactics. . . . Republicans should remember that the reason Osama bin Laden is still able to threaten the United States three years after the September 11th attacks is the utter failure of the Bush administration to catch him and destroy al Qaeda."

Such charges surfaced soon after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Late that year, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said tactics used by critics of the USA Patriot Act "only aid terrorists" and "give ammunition to America's enemies." In 2002, Bush charged that opponents of his version of homeland security legislation are "not interested in the security of the American people." In 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that if terrorists think Bush's opponents might prevail, "they take heart in that, and that leads to more money going into these activities or that leads to more recruits or that leads to more encouragement."

This year, the accusations began at lower levels. In March, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told a group of Republicans: "If George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election." Republicans say Democrats, while not suggesting Bush is guilty of treason, have indulged in questionable rhetoric themselves; they point to a tasteless performance at a Kerry fundraiser by performer Whoopi Goldberg (which the candidate did not disavow) and by Rep. Jim McDermott (Wash.), who on a visit to Baghdad two years ago defended Iraq and said Bush was misleading the public.

On Fox News, conservative commentator Ann Coulter said, "It's unquestionable that Republicans are more likely to prevent the next attack." Kerry, she said, "will improve the economy in the emergency services and body bag industry."

Whatever the merits, the charges that terrorists prefer Democrats have been echoed by independent commentators and journalists. CNN analyst Bill Schneider, asked about Hastert's remarks, agreed that al Qaeda "would very much like to defeat President Bush

."

Trouble in River (Euphrates) City?

From the Washington Post:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 — Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said today that the Bush administration's request to divert more than $3 billion from reconstruction work in Iraq to security measures was a sign that the American campaign in Iraq is in serious trouble.

"Although we recognize these funds must not be spent unwisely," the committee chairman, Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, said, "the slow pace of reconstruction spending means that we are failing to fully take advantage of one of our most potent tools to influence the direction of Iraq."

Well, duh. All you have to do is pay attention to the news and you can be well aware that what the Dubya Administration says and what reality is are quite two different things.

We are over 1,000 American deaths. The Iraqi death toll must be in 10s of thousands. And the bombings, shootings etc. continue while the interim government hides behind concrete walls surrounded by American soldiers. Saigon was in better shape during the Tet Offensive.

A telling story: the killing of Iraqi civilians (including at least two children) AND a Iraqi news crew cameraman by a U.S. Blackhawk as they stood around or on a burning American vehicle. We know why. A stressed out pilot angry at the attacks decided to take it out on the demonstrators by gunning them down. No action is taken by the military, who in fact denies it ever happened. And the shootings are seen on local television. How can you win their hearts and minds when you consistently kill innocents because they get in the line of fire?

Our poor, young soldiers are in a hell hole with no quick exit. And we continue with the big lie that all is OK.

My brother sends me a chain letter making the rounds of the internet showing multiple pictures of American soldiers sleeping in coffin-sized holes in the hot sun or eating lunch in ankle-deep mud. The message is that it's un-Christian and un-patriotic to complain at home when they have so little. Support our troops, the chain letter demands. I also think if I don't forward it, there is a penalty like seven years of bad luck, or some such. I'm risking it.

Actually, my spouse wants to send it back and say after much thought, it would be better to bring those poor boys and girls home. Why inflict upon them this awful life while their lives are in jeopardy daily, and all because an Administration made a very bad decision.

For reasons not clear to me, I am recommending she not do so. I do not want to cut off total communication between me and my blood relatives . . . but it is tempting.

So much to say, so little time.

Thanks to the 10 day vacation to the Rocky Mountains and Yellowstone Park, my frequent tirades about the current election year have gone lacking. There is so much to talk about - the Republican Convention, the mud being thrown in the "who served best" campaign, the ongoing blood bath in Iraq, the expanding welfare rolls, the increasing interference by Jesus and God (in that order) in the campaign, and maybe even the 10 Commandments.

But I do have a job, and right at the moment it is keeping me overly busy trying to catch up from the 10 days off.

And, too, there isn't a day passing that there isn't something new to comment on . . . so who knows when I will return to the prior mentioned topices.

But settle for this from the New York Times editorial page:

There are some things a presidential campaign should steer clear of, through innate good taste, prudence or just a sensible fear of a voter backlash. We'd have thought that both the Kerry and Bush camps would instinctively know that it would be appalling to suggest that terrorists were rooting for one side or another in this race. But Vice President Dick Cheney seemed to breach that unspoken barrier this week in Des Moines. If John Kerry was elected president, Mr. Cheney warned the crowd, "the danger is that we'll get hit again." In a long, rather rambling statement, he said the United States might then fall back into a "pre-9/11 mind-set" that "these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts."

At the very best, Mr. Cheney was speaking loosely and carelessly about the area in this campaign that deserves the most careful and serious discussion. It sounds to us more likely that he stepped across a line that the Bush campaign team had flirted with throughout its convention, telling his audience that re-electing the president would be the only way to stay safe from another attack.

There is a danger that we'll be hit again no matter who is elected president this November, as President Bush himself has said on many occasions. The danger might be a bit less if the current administration had chosen to spend less on tax cuts for the wealthy and more on protecting our ports, securing nuclear materials in Russia and establishing an enforceable immigration policy that would keep better track of people who enter the country from abroad.

Immigration and homeland security strategies are policy fights, fair game for a political campaign. What's totally unacceptable is to tell the American people that the mere act of voting for your opponent opens the door to a terrorist attack. For Mr. Cheney to suggest that is flat wrong. There was a time in this country when elected officials knew how to separate the position from the person. The American people, we're sure, would like to return to it.

If Bush loses this election - and I still believe there is a very good chance despite the recent polls - I think we will know who will be the GOP scapegoat. Dubya will never take the blame. I think the Cheneys will retire to Wyoming (Jackson Hole, if that can be called Wyoming) as the force that brought down God's candidate, George. Or at least George will think so.