--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > In a message dated 8/18/05 8:01:33 P.M. Central Daylight Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > Take a look here, please: > > http://www.schube.org/Hypocrites.aspx > > > > > Judy, I read your web site titled Hypocrites. Did you? I found > about 14 quotes made in the national media, the rest in local new > papers and occasional press releases, and a few were duplicates.
I don't have time to do a really thorough check, but I looked again; I did miss the fact that there were a few duplicates; I didn't realize there were two lists, one by category of Republican and one by date. But after weeding those duplicates out, by my count, there were 34 quotes from "national" media (including television) or major big-city papers like the Houston Chronicle and the Des Moines Register, plus three from the Congressional Record and four from press releases or small newspapers. So I'm not sure how you're counting. In the chronological list, the quotes are almost all from the New York Times, the Washington Post, AP, the Washington Times, and major TV interviews, plus one from NPR; of the 38 quotes, only nine are from other media or the Congressional Record or a press release. > Out of the 14 in national media, few > were harshly critical of the Clinton administration ,most asked > questions or had a personal comment which should have been easily > answered. None with the exception of maybe a few by Delay and one > or two by Pat Buchanan took on a more critical tone. I think this characterization is utterly absurd, frankly. Most of these are indeed harshly critical. They were also all from national Republican officeholders, including presidential candidates, not pundits or party flacks. And the "questions" were rhetorical, not requests for explanations or information. > Pat Buchanan's comments on Meet the Press dated 4/25/99 > being the harshest. However I find it hard to even compare these > few comments by Republicans to be anywhere close to the number or > quality of rhetoric that we have found spewed and eagerly reported > from the left by the mainstream national media today. I'm sorry, but this is *also* absurd. For one thing, as I pointed out, the Balkans war lasted only two and a half months, whereas the Iraq war has dragged on for two and a half *years* with no end in sight, most of it after Bush pranced around in his Top Gun costume on the aircraft carrier under the "Mission Accomplished" banner, declaring an end to major hostiliites. If the Kosovo war had lasted that long, especially after Clinton had declared victory, the Republicans would have been apoplectic. As it was, they were just getting warmed up. As to the media reporting criticism, the so-called liberal media were mostly cheerleading *for* the Iraq war. It wasn't until it became clear there were no WMD, the insurgency arose, and the American death toll began to mount, that you saw much in the way of criticism in the media. > During the war in Kosovo we didn't see an organized > effort to stop it or discredit it like we see now although the > case could have been made and not many people wanted our > involvement in it from the get go. But in the case of the Iraq war, there was a prolonged buildup and then a major ground invasion that we knew was going to take place; there was time to mount an effort against it. Moreover, as ignorant as Americans are of what goes on abroad, we knew a lot more about the situation in Iraq than we did that in the Balkans, partly because we'd been there before. Plus which, we were a lot more personally involved because of 9/11, so people were paying much closer attention. And there had been *very* little opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan, virtually none from prominent Democrats, so it's not as though folks automatically oppose wars started by Republicans. In many respects the Balkans war and the Iraq war are apples and oranges. But the *point* here is that Republicans had no problem criticizing the president publicly while troops were actually fighting, but they've been screaming bloody murder at Democrats who dare to criticize Bush while troops are fighting in Iraq. I don't personally object to anybody criticizing a war while it's going on. It's the Republican hypocrisy I think is disgraceful. > The fact is we went to Kosovo based on a lie. Remember, we went > there to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Albanian nationals by > ethnic Serbs. I'm not up on the details of the war in Kosovo, so I can't comment, except to say that I've seen complex arguments on both sides. Again, my point here is the Republican hypocrisy with regard to criticism, not the case for or against either war. I'd have the very same complaint if I knew enough about the Balkans war to have opposed it as strenuously as I do the Iraq war. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/JjtolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
