We are now being coerced to accept and believe that a new political-cum-religious doctrine has arisen, namely that there is but one political God, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair is his prophet.
The war, illegal and founded on a vast lie, has produced two tragedies of equal magnitude: an embryonic civil war in the world’s oldest country, and a triumph for those in the Bush administration who, without a trace of shame, act as if the truth does not matter. Lying until the lie became true, the administration pursued a course of action that guaranteed large sections of Iraq would become havens for jihadis and radical Islamists. That is the logic promoted by people who take for themselves divine infallibility — a righteousness that blinds and destroys….
Contrary to the administration’s hopeful statements, we are not seeing the establishment of a stable Iraq, the mopping up of reformed Baath Party apparatchiks and dead-enders. We are seeing the beginning of a larger conflict that is busily giving birth to monsters.
If you observe [Bush], it’s quite amusing. If you listen to him as he speaks, if you follow him closely, it would provide you a great many laughs. But it’s…comic moments against a very, very tragic background.
I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944, Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear. But this president does not know what death is. He hasn’t the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can’t seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn’t understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
September 25, 2004
And this man thinks he is deserving of "re-election"?
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Of the four comments, I would not have printed the one by Robert Mugabe, dictator of Zimbabwe.
I can't say that I disagree with you, James, but what I was focused on were the words more than the source. Mugabe may be a megalomaniacal despot, but in this instance his sentiments are spot on. Does his reputation make him any less credible? I'll leave that for my readers to decide.
Or you could look at it the way we used to in newsrooms.
IF you hack off both ends of the spectrum, you're doing your news coverage right: there's balance.
But this looks more like even Mugabe is commiserating with Bush's victims, which says a lot.
If you cover both extremes, and hack off the wishy washy middle, do you also acheive balance?
Yes, you do. Sort of. You do, however, end up hacking off the majority of the population. And thus the news reporting ceases to be relevant.
I suppose it could all depend on where one places the pair of lines that separate the two extremes from the middle. In practice, they are not necessarily symmetrical and the "middle" does not necessarily contain the majority.