BaldGOP

A Blog for Bald Republicans, and anyone else!

Thursday, June 22, 2006

WMD Coverage....Who Knew?

Bob Eberle said it best:

Oh Where, Oh Where is the WMD Coverage?
Posted By Bobby Eberle On June 22, 2006 at 7:14 am

On Wednesday, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), quoting from a Pentagon report, announced that since 2003, over 500 weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. According to Santorum, these sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles prove that “weapons of mass destruction are, in fact, in Iraq.” With news this important, one would expect wide-spread coverage, right? Wrong. The so-called main stream media is silent on this discovery, instead painting their own view of Iraq.
At the press conference, Santorum along with Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) said, “It is essential for the American people to understand that these weapons are in Iraq. I will continue to advocate for the complete declassification of this report so we can more fully understand the complete WMD picture inside Iraq.”

Santorum noted that the six key findings from the Pentagon report are as follows:
Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.
Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.
Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out.
The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.
The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.
It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.
It’s quite interesting and disappointing to see how this news has been bypassed by almost all of the major media outlets. This morning, there was not a single mention of the story on the CNN web site. Instead, the main headlines listed under “Latest News” (in addition to prime space for coverage of Western wildfires) where:
4 U.S. soldiers die in Afghan battle
Al Qaeda’s No. 2 releases new video
Attacks kill 5 U.S. service members in Iraq
Debate over Iraq heats up in Senate
Marines, corpsman face murder charges
On the ABC News web site, the lead story is “Seven Marines and One Sailor Charged With Murder.” Also listed on the main page under “Headlines” are the following stories:
U.S. Troops Killed: 4 in Iraq 4 in Afghanistan
Ariz. Wildfires Dangerously Close to Homes, Park
Calif. May Soon Face ‘Big One’
Japan Ships to Monitor N. Korea’s Missile Tests
The CBS News web site focuses on the wildfires as the lead story. Other main headlines include:
Duke Mom Wants Son ‘To Have Life Back’
Al Qaeda Tape Urges Afghans To Rise Up
Updated: 5 U.S. Troops Killed In Iraq
Times Have Changed In Germany
Dark Days For Bureau Of Indian Affairs
This morning, the FOX News web site had the WMD story on their main page, and it is now found in their political section. The main page of the New York Times’ web site makes no mention of the WMD story, but rather runs as their lead: “G.O.P. Decides to Embrace War as Issue.”
With all the one-sided reporting, is it any wonder that public support for action in Iraq will go down over time? So much was made of Abu Ghraib, yet where is the wide-spread reporting and outrage over what was done to two of America’s soldiers who were captured by Iraqi insurgents?
There is progress being made in Iraq, and the American people deserve honest, fair reporting on both the good and the bad. Their selective coverage does nothing to build a full story of what is happening in Iraq, but instead, is used to promote a left-wing agenda. That is not the role of the media, and hopefully, more and more Americans will see through their attempts to twist the news.

BaldGOP

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Marriage Amended

Here are the dominant liberal reactions to President Bush and the Republicans' call for a vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would amend the Constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman:
1. Virtually every news report about President George W. Bush's support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman describes it as "pandering" to the "far Right," the "radical Right" or, less pejoratively, "social conservatives" of the Republican Party.
2. Democrats regularly describe the amendment as enshrining "discrimination in the Constitution." In the words of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., "A vote for the amendment is a vote for bigotry -- pure and simple."
3. Republicans are attacked for "diverting" attention from far more important issues, such as, according to every Democratic leader, Iraq and gas prices.

Regarding the news reporting: This is another example of how the news media present news. First, Democrats are rarely, if ever, described as "pandering" to the Left, let alone "radical Left." Why not? For one thing, the news media do not believe there is a "radical Left," only a "radical Right." Second, liberalism regards positions held by Democrats to be sincere and noble, therefore, Democratic positions can never pander to anyone.
This is part of the larger liberal view of Republicans and conservatives: They are not merely wrong; they are either phonies or bad. It is inconceivable to most liberals that a Republican politician can sincerely oppose redefining the most important social structure of society. And if that Republican's opposition to redefining marriage is deemed sincere, it is inconceivable to most liberals that the person is anything but a bigot.
That most liberals cannot understand conservatives' views about marriage as anything but bigotry and/or pandering is part of a narcissism that characterizes much of the Left. The very definition of narcissism is an inability to see the world through the eyes of another. Whatever conservatives' flaws, far more conservatives understand liberals' views on same-sex marriage. Most opponents of same-sex marriage appreciate that liberals feel bad about gays' inability to marry a person of the same sex. In fact, as a proponent of a marriage amendment, I not only understand the liberal desire to enable people to marry someone of the same sex, I feel genuine compassion for gays on this matter.
But such empathy for ideological foes is all but absent from the narcissistic world of the Left. To virtually every liberal writer and spokesman, only liberals mean well, only they are sincere, only they are compassionate, and only they are intellectual, rational and tolerant.
Liberals' use of the word "radical" to describe opponents of same-sex marriage illustrates this self-aggrandizing mindset. To describe as "radical" those who wish to preserve the man-woman-based definition of marriage known to every civilization is to stand the word on its head. It is beyond intellectually dishonest -- it is mendacity -- to describe those who favor preserving the definition of marriage as "radical" rather than to so describe those who wish to change the gender-based definition of marriage for the first time in history. Even if you support same-sex marriage, you should at least have the honesty to admit that it is you who favors something radical.
Some of those who want a constitutional amendment to define marriage as man-woman are indeed bigoted against gays, regarding them as something less than fully human. But most people who want to maintain marriage as male-female consider homosexuals to be just as much created in the image of God as anyone else. But though it is painful for us to see a perfectly decent homosexual unable to marry a person of the same sex, we are nevertheless more preoccupied with:
(1) Giving every child the opportunity to at least begin life with a mother and father; (2) Honoring the will of the great majority of Americans, secular and religious, liberal and conservative, to preserve the man-woman marital ideal, and not allow a judge to single-handedly destroy that ideal; (3) Preserving the ability of teachers and clergy to tell the story of marriage to young children in terms of a man and woman and not confuse the vast majority of kids who are forming their vision of marriage and sexuality.
These preoccupations are neither bigoted nor radical. They are, in our view, civilization-saving.
As for the liberals' view that gas prices are more important than society's definition of marriage, it is so self-incriminating that no response is needed.

BaldGOP

A Liberal and History

GW said it best ... Peter Beinart is an advocate of liberal -- not ``progressive'' -- nostalgia. He wants to turn the clock back to 1947 at Washington's Willard Hotel.
Beinart, who was born in 1971, is editor at large of the liberal New Republic magazine and disdains the label ``progressive'' as a rejection of liberalism's useable past of anti-totalitarianism. An intellectual archaeologist, he excavates that vanished intellectual tradition and sends it into battle in his new book, ``The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.'' It expresses Beinart's understanding of liberalism in 1948, 1968 and, he hopes, 2008.
His project of curing liberalism's amnesia begins by revisiting Jan. 4, 1947, when liberal anti-totalitarians convened at the Willard to found Americans for Democratic Action. It became their instrument for rescuing the Democratic Party from Henry Wallace and his fellow-traveling followers who, locating the cause of the Cold War in American faults, were precursors of Michael Moore and his ilk among today's ``progressives.''

Among the heroes of liberalism's civil war of 60 years ago was Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who today is 88. He stigmatized their anti-anti-communism as ``doughface-ism.'' Beinart explains: ``The original doughfaces were 'Northern men with Southern principles' -- Northerners who opposed slavery, but who could not bring themselves to support the Civil War.'' Today's doughfaces are ``progressives'' who flinch from the fact that, as Beinart says, ``America could not have built schools for Afghan girls had it not bombed the Taliban first.''
Liberalism's civil war seemed won after Henry Wallace's Progressive Party candidacy failed to prevent President Truman's 1948 election. But the war broke out again in the Democratic Party's crack-up over Vietnam in 1968. Then, Beinart says, a ``new liberalism'' emerged that ``questioned whether America had much to offer the world.'' Four years later the party nominated George McGovern, who had been a delegate to the 1948 Progressive Party convention that nominated Wallace. McGovern's trumpet sounded retreat: ``Come home, America.''
Since then, Beinart argues, liberals have lacked a narrative of national greatness that links America's missions at home and abroad. It has been said that whereas the right-wing isolationists in the 1930s believed that America was too good for the world, left-wing isolationists in the 1960s believed that the world was too good for America. After Vietnam, Beinart says, liberal foreign policy was ``defined more by fear of American imperialism than fear of totalitarianism.''
Beinart briskly says ``I was wrong'' in supporting the invasion of Iraq. Wrong about Saddam's nuclear program. Wrong in being ``too quick to give up on containment.'' Wrong about the administration's competence to cope with the war's aftermath. (``Staffers tasked with postwar reconstruction were told to bring two suits. They would be home by the end of summer.'')
Denouncing conservatives for waging a ``war of hubris and impatience,'' Beinart says ``George W. Bush has faithfully carried out the great conservative project. He has stripped away the restraints on American power, in an effort to show the world that we are not weak. And in the process, he has made American power illegitimate, which has made us weak.'' Because ``the more proactive America wanted to be, the stronger international institutions had to become.''
But while excoriating the Bush administration for perhaps ``creating exactly the condition the conservatives have long feared: An America without the will to fight,'' Beinart's most important contribution is to confront the doughface liberals who rejoice about the weakening of that will. Reading liberals who seem to think they ``have no enemies more threatening, or more illiberal, than George W. Bush,'' Beinart worries that Deaniac liberals are taking over the Democratic Party much as McGovernite liberals did after 1968. He discerns the ``patronizing quality'' of many liberals' support for John Kerry in 2004: They ``weren't supporting Kerry because he had served in Vietnam. They were supporting him because they believed other, more hawkish, voters would support him because he had served in Vietnam.''
Beinart worries that ``the elections of 2006 and 2008 could resemble the elections of 1974 and 1976, when foreign policy exhaustion, and Republican scandal, propelled Democrats to big gains.'' If so, those gains will be ``a false dawn.'' The country will eventually turn right because, ``whatever its failings, the right at least knows that America's enemies need to be fought.''
Ronald Reagan said he did not want to return to the past but to the past's way of facing the future. As does Beinart, who locates the pertinent past in 1947.

BaldGOP