Advertisement

Too Many Cameras and Not Enough Truth: John Kerry Dodges the Press

Democratic Presidential nominee John F. Kerry seems to be evading any confrontation with the media. According to journalists who have been tracking Kerry along the campaign trail, the senator has not held a formal press conference since August 9, some two weeks before the last time President Bush met with the press.

When Israel ended a six-month lull in violence by striking a suspected Hamas training camp in Gaza and killing 14 with a U.S.-built Apache helicopter in response to the September 2 suicide bombings, Kerry did not take one question. Nor did he speak with the press corps when Israeli occupation forces destroyed two large apartment buildings south of Gaza in Khan Younis, leaving nearly 100 Palestinians homeless. But perhaps Kerry's most appalling act of silence came on September 7 when the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq reached 1,000 and Kerry declined to chat with the media.

The Washington Post quoted the New York Times' reporter Jodi Wilgoren, who is following Kerry along his campaign, as saying of Kerry's elusiveness: 'I think it's ridiculous. There are a lot of things happening in the

Unnoticed 1st Amendment Abuses

The United States has a long history of protecting and preserving freedom of the press. As early as 1789 Madison's version of the speech and press clauses, introduced in the House of Representatives on June 8, 1789, provided: ''The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable."

In the last 40 years the United States emerged as a worldwide leader insuring uninhibited public debate on governmental matters. This principal was permanently weaved in the social fabric of America Society in 1964 when a unanimous Supreme Court stated in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964): ''we consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.''

This policy is now in trouble. Specifically, the U.S. Department of State

SATIRE: 'Damn! That's sure bad luck for John Kerry!' Leaked White House Transcript

PRESIDENT BUSH: Hey hey hey!!! How about that wimp John Kerry. Are these guys pushovers or what?

KARL ROVE: No time to get cocky, George. We've still got six weeks to go.

PRESIDENT BUSH: What is that? Twenty-two days? We can handle it.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Hell, that'll fly by. These guys are even bigger whiners than we thought. It's almost embarrassing. Ha ha ha.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Why don't we just have the son-of-a-bitch rubbed out. He's still taller than you.

KARL ROVE: Telling that talk show host on national television that the war on terrorism can't be won was not part of the script, George. You have to be more careful.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Yeah, maybe you should stop campaigning with Jack Daniels.

PRESIDENT BUSH: You can go smooch Saddam again, Don.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Hell, Karl, these Democrats are so spineless George could do another reading of "My Pet Goat" on 60 Minutes and it won't matter. They didn't even pick up on what he said.

SECRETARY RIDGE: I believe John Kerry was out windsurfing that day. We had submarine surveillance on him.

Cost of war

When are we going to wake up and get the point? Now that we have counted 1,000+ dead soldiers in Iraq, isn't it about time to reconsider what we are doing? There are no weapons of mass destruction - just lies. There is no connection between September 11 and Iraq - just lies. There was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda -just lies. The world and especially America is not safer as a result of these actions. The Bush administration continues to manipulate your emotions with constant false alarms, vague warnings, or nonspecific information from unspecified sources, and elevated color alerts. Does this make you feel safer?

The Bush administration seems to think it can defeat terrorism by 'taking the fight to the enemy', but Homeland Security expert Stephen Flynn warns, "Targeting terrorism at its source is an appealing notion, unfortunately, the enemy is not cooperating." The 'coalition of the willing' is slowly coming to the realization that this approach won't work. The few 'coalition' nations still present only have about 90 persons in Iraq and those may be withdrawn soon. We have about 145,000 and are losing

Ben Barnes

AUSTIN, Texas --- Oh for heaven's sake, doesn't anyone know how to research a story anymore? I have never seen anything as silly as this ridiculous Republican chorus that, aha!, Ben Barnes is a Democrat and so we know he's lying!

        The question is not whether Ben Barnes is a Democrat. Ben Barnes has never claimed to be nonpartisan or not to have any affiliation with the Kerry campaign. Of course he does. He's been a major Democratic player for years. The question is whether Ben Barnes is telling the truth about how he got George W. Bush in the Texas Air National Guard.

        The ridiculous little blowhard Sean Hannity crowed on Fox "News" that "Ben Barnes testified under oath in 1999 that no member of the Bush family ever contacted him about getting into the Air National Guard." How true. Nor has he changed his story one whit. Barnes testified in 1999 that the man who called him about little George Bush was Sid Adger, Poppy George Bush's dear and good friend. Let's ask Poppy about Sid Adger and see some of that "famous Bush loyalty."

The Brave Posturing of Armchair Warriors

Soon after the American death toll in Iraq passed the 1,000 mark, I thought of Saadoun Hammadi and some oratory he provided two years ago.

At the time, Hammadi was the speaker of Iraq's National Assembly. "The U.S. administration is now speaking war," Hammadi said. "We are not going to turn the other cheek. We are going to fight. Not only our armed forces will fight. Our people will fight."

The date was Sept. 14, 2002. The venue was an ornate room inside a grand government building in Baghdad. And the gaunt elderly official was determined to make an impression on the four American visitors. So, with steel in his voice, Hammadi added: "I personally will fight."

Looking across the room, I tried to imagine this frail man pointing a rifle at American troops. He sounded awfully brave. And who was to say he wouldn't be on the front lines of Iraqi resistance to the invaders? Yet it was hard to picture him wielding a weapon against the armed forces of the world's only superpower.

Overall, Hammadi's prediction that "our people will fight" has

Letter to a conservative: Kerry is consistently respectful to vets, Bush flip flops on drug use

unlike any conservative i know, i actually *read through the kerry testimony in the 1970s.  much to your disappointment, i'm sure, a great deal of kerry's prepared testimony is about how vietnam vets aren't treated with enough respect and help in the u.s, how they are in pain and have been forgotten.  For example, "I understand 57 percent of all those entering the VA hospitals talk about suicide. Some 27 percent have tried, and they try because they come back to this country and they have to face what they did in Vietnam, and then they come back and find the indifference of a country that doesn't really care, that doesn't really care."

while he is certainly critical of the war and the role of soliders in vietnam (and for a good reason!), he blames the chain of command and the leadership for the problems in vietnam ... not the soldiers.  when he talks about soldiers as rapists and so on, he is telling what has been told to him by soldiers -- it is not an accusation.  "They [the soliders giving testimony to Kerry's organization] relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do."

his concluding comments are:

And so it goes...

AUSTIN, Texas -- The wire services are reporting that we just lost seven Marines in Fallujah. To use Linda Ellerbee's line, "And so it goes ..."

        The way it does not, NOT go is as claimed last week at the Republican convention. I feel like the janitor in that photo of Madison Square Garden after the party, facing a sea of garbage that needs to be collected and thrown out. Even after several days and with alert bloggers to help, it's hard to catch all the lies. The number of things John Kerry is supposed to have said that he never said was the largest category.

        -- Kerry never said we need to have a "sensitive war." (Bonus points if you can find Bush's references to our need for more sensitivity.)

        -- Kerry never said we need other countries' permission to go to war.

        -- Kerry has never failed to "support our troops in combat."

Shut up and color: the politics of bullying

He's lost his voice since, but the best thing John Kerry did at the Democratic convention was to challenge the bullying. He talked of the flag belonging to all of us, and how "standing up to speak our minds is not a challenge to patriotism [but] the heart and soul of patriotism." By doing this, he drew the line against the pattern of intimidation that the Bush administration has used to wage war on democracy itself.

A former Air Force Colonel I know described the administration's attitude toward dissent as "shut up and color," as if we were unruly eight-year-olds. Whatever we may think of Bush's particular policies, the most dangerous thing he's done is to promote a culture that equates questioning with treason. This threatens the very dialogue that's at the core of our republic.

Think of the eve of the Iraq war, and the contempt heaped on those generals who dared to suggest that the war might take far more troops and money than the administration was suggesting. Think of the attacks on the reputations and motives of long-time Republicans who've recently dared to question, like

What? No terror alert to herald the Osama Surprise?

Surprise! Surprise!! There have been no official terror alerts to interfere with the much-hyped Bush Bounce following last week's Republican National Convention.

And after waiting through the Labor Day weekend, with trial balloons floating about the long-awaited Osama Surprise, it's easy to see why.

Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge has issued two terror alerts during the presidential campaign. One immediately followed John Kerry's choice of John Edwards as his running mate. The other immediately followed the Democratic National Convention.

The timing could not have been more obvious. Edwards' nomination generated a huge buzz for the Democrats. But the major media instantly turned to the intricacies of Ridge's bizarre, apocalyptic scare scam.

Then came a successful DNC. Again Ridge instantly screamed out breathless tales of a terrorist wolf, while the media slobbered at the door.

Ridge had only stale snippets, with no solid evidence for an imminent attack. There was no attack, and no arrests.

Pages

Subscribe to Freepress.org RSS