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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (331294)	4/2/2007 10:09:32 AM
From: Alighieri	Respond to of 1573433

Why Dowd Doubts (4 comments ) READ MORE: George W. Bush, John Kerry, Iraq, U.S. Congress In an interview in the NYTimes, Matthew Dowd, a key architect of Bush's 2004 campaign that was based largely on trashing John Kerry, now concedes that "Kerry was right". Most commentary on his conversion focuses on his critique of the Bush Administration, and the multiple ways Bush has disappointed him. That is a good intellectual explanation. But, consider this paragraph from the article: "His views against the war began to harden last spring when, in a personal exercise, he wrote a draft opinion article and found himself agreeing with Mr. Kerry's call for withdrawal from Iraq. He acknowledged that the expected deployment of his son Daniel was an important factor." (emphasis supplied). We all know that people, especially political people, tend to diminish the impact of their own experiences and emotions on their views unless they can connect them to more universal feelings. The deployment of your own son is something you can share with the other families, but most of the country has not sacrificed for this war. Thus, I take Dowd's statement as highly revealing of what really drove his conversion. As the saying goes, "nothing like a good hanging to focus the mind". I have argued in this space that, short of cutting off funding, the most potent strategy to bring the war to an end is to confront war proponents, especially the administration, about why it is that they (if under 40),or their children (if between 17 and 40) have not volunteered for Iraq. Neither opponents of the war, nor the press, has asked the question of Bush or Cheney. Adam Putnam, the 30 year old redheaded Republican in leadership, has never been asked why it is that he does not resign to volunteer to contribute to the cause he champions. (Of course, he would say that he has more important job in Congress---but, a follow up question might be what about all the police, what about all the other people who also have important jobs, and families they are asked to leave for deployment after deployment after deployment). There is a conspiracy of silence between politicians on both sides, and the media, to avoid this issue of ultimate accountability. If Congress would just propose an amendment to the post-veto Iraq funding measure that said this: "any child or grandchild between 17 and 40 years of age of the President and Vice-President, and any appointed members of an Administration who are subject to Senate confirmation, will be drafted into the army upon the authorization by Congress of hostilities by the US military", the debate itself would be instructive. William Crystal, the radical right wing commentator who, after first lying to a Seattle audience that he was too young for Vietnam, and then, when outed,angrily shouted "why should I?",called the Congress's action "disgraceful". What is really disgraceful is lying the country into a war that the leaders do not directly experience through risking the lives and limbs of their own children. Every Presidential candidate ought to be asked whether, if they are elected and take the country to war, they will pledge to have their own children volunteer. Under those constraints, the Iraq War would never have happened. If you doubt that, ask Matt Dowd.

To: Road Walker who wrote (331294)	4/2/2007 10:30:15 AM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 1573433

re: Oh yeah......what he failed to point out is that he wore a bulletproof vest and was accompanied by 150 soldiers. That wouldn't help him if he walked though South East DC. a democrat controlled area