Frank Rich on the bashing of Cindy Sheehan (nsr)

[Benny Profane]

"I don't know where he's going to get these troops," Hagel said. "There won't be any National Guard left ... no Army Reserve left ... there is no way America is going to have 100,000 troops in Iraq, nor should it, in four years."

well, I see that no one in their right mind will use the D word. Especially someone with presidential aspirations.

[skibe]

To each their own skibe. If you find the situation with Iraq over there and at home boring, then don't read these nsr posts and keep your head in the sand like shrub.

I didn't mean any harm in it ND. Just felt spunky last night. It's hard to find the situation in Iraq boring when you have a little brother that spent the first year of the war in Samarra and is scheduled to be deployed again Dec. 7th. I might not agree with W on all issues but our troops have my full support and I know they will continue to kick ass wherever needed. On another note I bought some new shiney ski boots a couple days ago and am fucking stoked for fall! Have a nice evening.

[skibe]

One more instance of the apapthy that those in control love. In order to lead you have to show up. You think it's cool to be controlled by others. Not lending your voice allows others to make the decisions that control your life.

Until you know who I am and what Im about STFU dumb ass!

[Nobody Famous]

Interesting reading: PR Machine Behind Cindy Sheehan?

[mr_gyptian]

Interesting reading: PR Machine Behind Cindy Sheehan?

heh, not suprising at all. I really wonder what type of coverage would be applied to parents who have lost children in the war, support the war, and protest outside Fat Teddy's Hyannisport compound.

[Grange]

Not as much as Cindy Sheehan is getting and for good reason too. Teddy didn't lead the charge into Iraq. Teddy didn't use information, which turned out to be false, as a pretense for war. Teddy isn't the guy who has the power to recall the troops even if he wanted. Teddy isn't in the middle of a FIVE WEEK vacation while the country is at war. And probably the most important reason, Teddy isn't the President of the United States of America.

While I sympathize with Cindy I do agree that her message has shifted. At first I thought she wanted to meet the President so he could explain his reason for going into a war where her son died. Now she has become a typical anti-war protester and wants the US to leave the mess we created.

I don't support just cutting and running from Iraq. We have to see this mess through if at all possible. I just wish the President would set some goals for the troops so they have a goal to focus on with measurable success. We used goals, or others call them timelines, before such as elections, so why shouldn't we use these to help our troops? This "stay the coarse" seems to me like the President hasn't got a clue and is washing his hands of the situation by letting others make the decisions. He's the President for God's sake. He needs to get his ass back to work rather than riding a bike with Lance Armstrong and cutting brush.

[bklyn]

...protest outside Fat Teddy's Hyannisport compound.

Yes, but not the same. Teddy's got nothing to lose by meeting with them. He could let them sound off in front of him and the cameras and have a soundbite that says something to the effect of...

I listened to them out of respect for their grief, but I still disagree with their position.

Bush should have just met with her again, listened to all she had to say and then just done the same as above. His people don't want him in any type of unscripted situation because they know he will fuck it up.

[mr_gyptian]

At first, I agree, I thought he should have met with her. Then I started to read transcripts of her speeches before and after her son's death. but she is stark raving mad. there is absolutely no upside to meeting with someone that is as unhinged as she is.

as I've said before I support her right to protest in the fashion she is. however, what she is saying does nothing but devalue her son's and 1800 other soldier's deaths.

at this point I'm starting to think she is another one of Karl Rove's moles.

[Tippster]

heh, not suprising at all. I really wonder what type of coverage would be applied to parents who have lost children in the war, support the war, and protest outside Fat Teddy's Hyannisport compound.

What, all four of them? Not much.

As an admitted Clinton Democrat (rather centrist) and coincidentally a member of the media I think it's shameful, yet not surprising, how this woman's grief is being used by liberal groups. She's losing her credibility and the countries empathy by quite literally selling out to a whole agenda rather than merely doing what she went there to do, which is to get the president to justify and to take personal responsibility for his war in Iraq. Don't water down the power of her message by conniving her into being your spokesmodel for all of society's ills.

The left's problem is that they don't realize that overkill turns people off. Subtlety is the key - they should learn from the Roves how to promote an agenda, not from the Carvilles.

[mr_gyptian]

well said Tipp. I don't understand how Joe Trippi could have been so savvy with clinton and so tone deaf with both Gore and Dean.

but at its heart, the Democrats are a party without ideas. until they stop following people like Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, and Howard Dean their election day woes will continue.

[Grange]

What, all four of them? Not much.

As an admitted Clinton Democrat (rather centrist) and coincidentally a member of the media I think it's shameful, yet not surprising, how this woman's grief is being used by liberal groups. She's losing her credibility and the countries empathy by quite literally selling out to a whole agenda rather than merely doing what she went there to do, which is to get the president to justify and to take personal responsibility for his war in Iraq. Don't water down the power of her message by conniving her into being your spokesmodel for all of society's ills.

The left's problem is that they don't realize that overkill turns people off. Subtlety is the key - they should learn from the Roves how to promote an agenda, not from the Carvilles.

I agree. That doesn't mean I agree with the conservatives plan to discredit her by calling her crazy or wacko thereby deflecting criticism of President Bush, but I do think she should not have taken on all of the problems with this war either.

[Tippster]

I agree. That doesn't mean I agree with the conservatives plan to discredit her by calling her crazy or wacko thereby deflecting criticism of President Bush, but I do think she should not have taken on all of the problems with this war either.

My point exactly.

[Grange]

well said Tipp. I don't understand how Joe Trippi could have been so savvy with clinton and so tone deaf with both Gore and Dean.

but at its heart, the Democrats are a party without ideas. until they stop following people like Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, and Howard Dean their election day woes will continue.

While the Republicans are the party of bad ideas. From wanting to spend over a trillion dollars of money we don't have to take more money away from social security to save social security from going bankrupt, to ignoring science and not taking global warming seriously.

[mr_gyptian]

I agree. That doesn't mean I agree with the conservatives plan to discredit her by calling her crazy or wacko thereby deflecting criticism of President Bush, but I do think she should not have taken on all of the problems with this war either.

why would I call her a wacko? here's a little taste of why:


"I was raised in a country by a public school system that taught us that America was good, that America was just. America has been killing people . . . since we first stepped on this continent, we have been responsible for death and destruction. I passed on that bullshit to my son and my son enlisted. I'm going all over the country telling moms: "This country is not worth dying for." If we're attacked, we would all go out. We'd all take whatever we had. I'd take my rolling pin and I'd beat the attackers over the head with it. But we were not attacked by Iraq. We might not even have been attacked by Osama bin Laden if 9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through and, if I would have known that before my son was killed, I would have taken him to Canada. I would never have let him go and try and defend this morally repugnant system we have. The people are good, the system is morally repugnant. . . .

What they're saying, too, is like, it's okay for Israel to have nuclear weapons. But Iran or Syria better not get nuclear weapons. It's okay for the United States to have nuclear weapons. It's okay for the countries that we say it's okay for. We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now. It's okay for them to have them, but Iran or Syria can't have them. It's okay for Israel to occupy Palestine, but it's--yeah--and it's okay for Iraq to occupy--I mean, for the United States to occupy Iraq, but it's not okay for Syria to be in Lebanon."


obviously the words of a sane woman.

[Grange]

The woman is pissed her son died in a war she doesn't agree with. People say a lot of things when they're pissed. I don't agree with everything in that segment of a speach she gave, but that doesn't make her crazy! I wouldn't argue with someone who said she going overboard with her speaches from time to time, but again that doesn't mean she is mentally unfit. Watch C-Span when congress is in session and you'll hear "crazy" statements by politicians of both parties.

By your logic Pat Robertson should be in a mental institution. Just look at the thread containing his quotes on lesbianism, Jews, and democratically elected officials. I have not heard any conservatives call him crazy. Some have said he was just angry and that's understandable. There were no personal attacks at him unlike what conservatives are doing to Cindy Sheehan. That's being a hypocrite.

I have no problem with people disagreeing with her position, but to hurl personal insults just to discredit her is wrong.

[mr_gyptian]

The woman is pissed her son died in a war she doesn't agree with. People say a lot of things when they're pissed. I don't agree with everything in that segment of a speach she gave, but that doesn't make her crazy! I wouldn't argue with someone who said she going overboard with her speaches from time to time, but again that doesn't mean she is mentally unfit. Watch C-Span when congress is in session and you'll hear "crazy" statements by politicians of both parties.

By your logic Pat Robertson should be in a mental institution. Just look at the thread containing his quotes on lesbianism, Jews, and democratically elected officials. I have not heard any conservatives call him crazy. Some have said he was just angry and that's understandable. There were no personal attacks at him unlike what conservatives are doing to Cindy Sheehan. That's being a hypocrite.

I have no problem with people disagreeing with her position, but to hurl personal insults just to discredit her is wrong.

ummh she does a fine job of discrediting herself. she doesn't need a conservative pundit to help her in that department.

go to sites like Talking Points Memo, Moveon.org and then tell me Pat Robertson didn't get any insults hurled at him.

Oh and I did look in that thread and there is a post in there by yours truly calling Pat Robertson the original model of for the idiotarians.

[Grange]

ummh she does a fine job of discrediting herself. she doesn't need a conservative pundit to help her in that department.

go to sites like Talking Points Memo, Moveon.org and then tell me Pat Robertson didn't get any insults hurled at him.

Oh and I did look in that thread and there is a post in there by yours truly calling Pat Robertson the original model of for the idiotarians.

Great. I'm glad you condemn his comments, but you are in the minority when it comes to conservatives as a whole, which is who I am talking about. From Hannity to Limbaugh to Medveds none of them would condemn what he said. They rationalize his statements and blame the "liberal media" for blowing it all out of proportion.

You're right. Liberal sites are just as hypocritical as the conservatives, but that still doesn't make it right.

Just because everyone doesn't agree with her statements doesn't mean everything she says is discredited. If conservatives want to challenge her on her speeches fine. Let them give a speech with their viewpoints but don't call her crazy. Conservatives have been making personal attacks against Cindy Sheehan before she ever made these speeches and that is wrong.

[mr_gyptian]

Great. I'm glad you condemn his comments, but you are in the minority when it comes to conservatives as a whole, which is who I am talking about. From Hannity to Limbaugh to Medveds none of them would condemn what he said. They rationalize his statements and blame the "liberal media" for blowing it all out of proportion.

You're right. Liberal sites are just as hypocritical as the conservatives, but that still doesn't make it right.

Just because everyone doesn't agree with her statements doesn't mean everything she says is discredited. If conservatives want to challenge her on her speeches fine. Let them give a speech with their viewpoints but don't call her crazy. Conservatives have been making personal attacks against Cindy Sheehan before she ever made these speeches and that is wrong.

she is making claims that we are nuking Iraq, and she did so well before the Crawford circus began. The speech I quoted was from last year when she spoke at a rally for Lynne Stewart. so rather than crazy, would delusional suffice?

On Brit Hume's show the other evening Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, and Maura Liasson(sic) all ripped Robertson. Rumsfeld made it absolutely clear that Robertson in no way speaks for the administration's foreign policy. The problem with the Pat Robertson's of the world is that if you engage them in dialogue in any way, especially to reprimand, you lower yourself to their level.

[Stu Gotz]

Robertson has had his hand slapped for being a bad boy, but just wait how fast the tent welcomes him back when McCain needs to get derailed again in South Carolina. The Shrub and the rest of his gang owe the presidency to Robertson.

[Grange]

she is making claims that we are nuking Iraq, and she did so well before the Crawford circus began. The speech I quoted was from last year when she spoke at a rally for Lynne Stewart. so rather than crazy, would delusional suffice?

On Brit Hume's show the other evening Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, and Maura Liasson(sic) all ripped Robertson. Rumsfeld made it absolutely clear that Robertson in no way speaks for the administration's foreign policy. The problem with the Pat Robertson's of the world is that if you engage them in dialogue in any way, especially to reprimand, you lower yourself to their level.

They also tried to rationalize his words to lessen their criticism, which the didn't do for Sheehan. Watch Fox news tomorrow morning and if they have Robertson as a topic and watch them rationalize.

Saying Robertson doesn't speak for the administration certainly isn't the same thing as condemning his statements, which the adminstration should have done.

As far as Sheehan's comments you quoted I don't think she is saying we are dropping nukes on Iraq. She is referring to the fact that the US went war so Iraq wouldn't have nuclear weapon capability while we continue to develop nuclear weapons. I don't know why I am even trying to defend her statements I don't agree with many of them.

[natty dread]

Delusional...crazy...try an analysis of chicken hawk shrub's lies before you go bashing the mom of a dead soldier Mr. G

[bklyn]

I still hang on to my point that Bush should have met with her again.

1. Crazy or not, her family has made the 'ultimate sacrifice'.
2. You're on a 5 week vacation, you can't spend 10 minutes?
3. BE a LEADER! Let her and the country move on.
4. Don't let yourself be shown up by LOTR actor Viggo Mortensen**, who took some time out to meet her.
5. You're on a 5 week vacation, you can't spend 10 minutes?

(**Still hot even though YogaChick has verified that he has an unnaturally large skull)

[natty dread]

August 28, 2005
The Vietnamization of Bush's Vacation
By FRANK RICH
ANOTHER week in Iraq, another light at the end of the tunnel. On Monday President Bush saluted the Iraqis for "completing work on a democratic constitution" even as the process was breaking down yet again. But was anyone even listening to his latest premature celebration?

We have long since lost count of all the historic turning points and fast-evaporating victories hyped by this president. The toppling of Saddam's statue, "Mission Accomplished," the transfer of sovereignty and the purple fingers all blur into a hallucinatory loop of delusion. One such red-letter day, some may dimly recall, was the adoption of the previous, interim constitution in March 2004, also proclaimed a "historic milestone" by Mr. Bush. Within a month after that fabulous victory, the insurgency boiled over into the war we have today, taking, among many others, the life of Casey Sheehan.

It's Casey Sheehan's mother, not those haggling in Baghdad's Green Zone, who really changed the landscape in the war this month. Not because of her bumper-sticker politics or the slick left-wing political operatives who have turned her into a circus, but because the original, stubborn fact of her grief brought back the dead the administration had tried for so long to lock out of sight. With a shove from Pat Robertson, her 15 minutes are now up, but even Mr. Robertson's antics revealed buyer's remorse about Iraq; his stated motivation for taking out Hugo Chávez by assassination was to avoid "another $200 billion war" to remove a dictator.

In the wake of Ms. Sheehan's protest, the facts on the ground in America have changed almost everywhere. The president, for one, has been forced to make what for him is the ultimate sacrifice: jettisoning chunks of vacation to defend the war in any bunker he can find in Utah or Idaho. In the first speech of this offensive, he even felt compelled to take the uncharacteristic step of citing the number of American dead in public (though the number was already out of date by at least five casualties by day's end). For the second, the White House recruited its own mom, Tammy Pruett, for the president to showcase as an antidote to Ms. Sheehan. But in a reversion to the president's hide-the-fallen habit, the chosen mother was not one who had lost a child in Iraq.

It isn't just Mr. Bush who is in a tight corner now. Ms. Sheehan's protest was the catalyst for a new national argument about the war that managed to expose both the intellectual bankruptcy of its remaining supporters on the right and the utter bankruptcy of the Democrats who had rubber-stamped this misadventure in the first place.

When the war's die-hard cheerleaders attacked the Middle East policy of a mother from Vacaville, Calif., instead of defending the president's policy in Iraq, it was definitive proof that there is little cogent defense left to be made. When the Democrats offered no alternative to either Mr. Bush's policy or Ms. Sheehan's plea for an immediate withdrawal, it was proof that they have no standing in the debate.

Instead, two conservative Republicans - actually talking about Iraq instead of Ms. Sheehan, unlike the rest of their breed - stepped up to fill this enormous vacuum: Chuck Hagel and Henry Kissinger. Both pointedly invoked Vietnam, the war that forged their political careers. Their timing, like Ms. Sheehan's, was impeccable. Last week Mr. Bush started saying that the best way to honor the dead would be to "finish the task they gave their lives for" - a dangerous rationale that, as David Halberstam points out, was heard as early as 1963 in Vietnam, when American casualties in that fiasco were still inching toward 100.

And what exactly is our task? Mr. Bush's current definition - "as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" - could not be a better formula for quagmire. Twenty-eight months after the fall of Saddam, only "a small number" of Iraqi troops are capable of fighting without American assistance, according to the Pentagon - a figure that Joseph Biden puts at "fewer than 3,000." At this rate, our 138,000 troops will be replaced by self-sufficient locals in roughly 100 years.

For his part, Mr. Hagel backed up his assertion that we are bogged down in a new Vietnam with an irrefutable litany of failure: "more dead, more wounded, less electricity in Iraq, less oil being pumped in Iraq, more insurgency attacks, more insurgents coming across the border, more corruption in the government." Mr. Kissinger no doubt counts himself a firm supporter of Mr. Bush, but in Washington Post this month, he drew a damning lesson from Vietnam: "Military success is difficult to sustain unless buttressed by domestic support." Anyone who can read a poll knows that support is gone and is not coming back. The president's approval rating dropped to 36 percent in one survey last week.

What's left is the option stated bluntly by Mr. Hagel: "We should start figuring out how we get out of there."

He didn't say how we might do that. John McCain has talked about sending more troops to rectify our disastrous failure to secure the country, but he'll have to round them up himself door to door. As the retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey reported to the Senate, the National Guard is "in the stage of meltdown and in 24 months we'll be coming apart." At the Army, according to The Los Angeles Times, officials are now predicting an even worse shortfall of recruits in 2006 than in 2005. The Leo Burnett advertising agency has been handed $350 million for a recruitment campaign that avoids any mention of Iraq.

Among Washington's Democrats, the only one with a clue seems to be Russell Feingold, the Wisconsin senator who this month proposed setting a "target date" (as opposed to a deadline) for getting out. Mr. Feingold also made the crucial observation that "the president has presented us with a false choice": either "stay the course" or "cut and run." That false choice, in which Mr. Bush pretends that the only alternative to his reckless conduct of the war is Ms. Sheehan's equally apocalyptic retreat, is used to snuff out any legitimate debate. There are in fact plenty of other choices echoing about, from variations on Mr. Feingold's timetable theme to buying off the Sunni insurgents.

But don't expect any of Mr. Feingold's peers to join him or Mr. Hagel in fashioning an exit strategy that might work. If there's a moment that could stand for the Democrats' irrelevance it came on July 14, the day Americans woke up to learn of the suicide bomber in Baghdad who killed as many as 27 people, nearly all of them children gathered around American troops. In Washington that day, the presumptive presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a press conference vowing to protect American children from the fantasy violence of video games.

The Democrats are hoping that if they do nothing, they might inherit the earth as the Bush administration goes down the tubes. Whatever the dubious merits of this Kerryesque course as a political strategy, as a moral strategy it's unpatriotic. The earth may not be worth inheriting if Iraq continues to sabotage America's ability to take on Iran and North Korea, let alone Al Qaeda.

As another politician from the Vietnam era, Gary Hart, observed last week, the Democrats are too cowardly to admit they made a mistake three years ago, when fear of midterm elections drove them to surrender to the administration's rushed and manipulative Iraq-war sales pitch. So now they are compounding the original error as the same hucksters frantically try to repackage the old damaged goods.

IN the new pitch there are no mushroom clouds. Instead we get McCarthyesque rhetoric accusing critics of being soft on the war on terrorism, which the Iraq adventure has itself undermined. Before anyone dare say Vietnam, the president, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld drag in the historian David McCullough and liken 2005 in Iraq to 1776 in America - and, by implication, the original George W. to ours. Before you know it, Ahmad Chalabi will be rehabilitated as Ben Franklin.

The marketing campaign will crescendo in two weeks, on the anniversary of 9/11, when a Defense Department "Freedom Walk" will trek from the site of the Pentagon attack through Arlington National Cemetery to a country music concert on the Mall. There the false linkage of Iraq to 9/11 will be hammered in once more, this time with a beat: Clint Black will sing "I Raq and Roll," a ditty whose lyrics focus on Saddam, not the Islamic radicals who actually attacked America. Lest any propaganda opportunity be missed, Arlington's gravestones are being branded with the Pentagon's slogans for military campaigns, like Operation Iraqi Freedom, The Associated Press reported last week - a historic first. If only the administration had thought of doing the same on the fallen's coffins, it might have allowed photographs.

Even though their own poll numbers are in a race to the bottom with the president's, don't expect the Democrats to make a peep. Republicans, their minds increasingly focused on November 2006, may well blink first. In yet another echo of Vietnam, it's millions of voters beyond the capital who will force the timetable for our inexorable exit from Iraq.

[Buster Highmen]

The problem with the mr_gyptianof the world is that if you engage them in dialogue in any way, especially to reprimand, you lower yourself to their level.

........

[Spats]

until they stop following people like Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, and Howard Dean their election day woes will continue.

You keep saying that. Why should any Democrat listen to a hard-core Republican about how to run their party?

The Republican Party is scared of Howard Dean. The Republicans and the media they control worked relentlessly to paint him as an extremist, when in fact, he is a moderate who balances his state budget, is pro-gun rights, and is not afraid to step up and challenge the Republicans when they lie.

The Republican love people like Lieberman and Kerry, because they know how to beat them in an election. They didn't know how to beat Dean.