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In-a-Gadda Da-Vida We Trust (Dowd alert)
The New York Times ^ | 05/28/03 | Maureen Dowd

Posted on 05/27/2003 9:11:29 PM PDT by Pokey78

By rolling over Iraq, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld hoped to deep-six the sixties.

The president was down with that. He never grooved on the vibe of the Age of Aquarius anyway.

Conservatives were eager to purge the decades' demons, from tie-dye to moral relativism, from Hanoi Jane to wilting patriotism, from McGovern to blaming America first, from Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds to the Clintonesque whatever-gets-you-through-the-night ethos.

In their preferred calendar, more Gingrichian than Gregorian, American culture fast-forwards from Elvis's blue suede shoes to John Travolta's white polyester suit.

Whatever else has gone awry in the Mideast so far, the administration may have succeeded in exorcising American queasiness about using force, and any vestigial image of the military as "baby killers."

As Robin Toner wrote in The Times yesterday, trust in the military is brimming, up to 79 percent from 58 percent in 1975, according to Gallup.

The tactical efficacy and moral delicacy of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq solidified a trend: the children of Vietnam-scarred boomers trust the government, and especially the military, far more than did their parents, whose generational mantra was "Don't trust anyone over 30."

As Ms. Toner noted, a Harvard poll found that 75 percent of college kids trusted the military "to do the right thing" either "all of the time" or "most of the time." Two-thirds of the students supported the Iraqi war, with hawks beating doves 2 to 1.

Mr. Bush runs a "trust us, we're 100 percent right" regime. So we've got a young generation that wants to take it on faith. And an administration that wants to be taken on faith.

The beginning of a beautiful friendship? Maybe. Unless the White House politicizes 9/11 so much it squanders all that belief.

Karl Rove's re-election strategy is designed to tug 9/11 heartstrings, and his ads will be heroic images of Top Gun chasing down the bad guys.

The president and his posse diverted anger over 9/11 to Iraq, and now they are diverting it to Iran.

The Bushies are playing up Al Qaeda terrorists they say are hunkered down in Iran, even as they overlook all the Al Qaeda terrorists crouching in countries the administration doesn't want to demonize, like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. And the hawks have turned to grooming Iranian exiles, who are pumping out reports of secret nuclear labs. Sound familiar?

After the war, the triumphal administration bragged about its Iraqi, Taliban and Qaeda scalps, painting our enemies as being in retreat.

"Al Qaeda is on the run," the president said in Little Rock, Ark. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely, being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore."

But Al Qaeda, it became horrifyingly clear a week later in Riyadh, was not decimated; it was sufficiently undecimated to murder 34 people, injure 200 and scare the daylights out of Americans everywhere.

If Bush-Cheney '04's use of Sept. 11 begins to look like cynicism, then cynicism is precisely what it will produce. Officials should stop speaking about threats and triumphs until they know exactly what they are speaking about. They should lose their bewildering and unconvincing color code, because orange doesn't communicate anything to anybody any more.

They should agree, in a spirit of humility and true public service, to stop getting obnoxiously in the way of the release of the 800-page Congressional report that will provide what every American has a right to know about 9/11.

As Michael Isikoff writes in Newsweek, the Bush team does not want the public to pore over the president's daily intelligence briefings, like the one given on Aug. 6, 2001, at the Crawford ranch that dealt with the possibility that Al Qaeda might hijack airplanes. Or the parts of the 9/11 report that deal with our petroleum pals, the Saudis, and their recalcitrance in cooperating in the war on terror. The report, he says, "discusses evidence that individuals with Saudi government connections may have provided the hijackers aid."

The public should take its cue from Mr. Bush's beau ideal, Ronald Reagan. As the Gipper advised, "Trust, but verify."  


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bs; bsartist; catherinezetajones; falsification; howellraines; hownowmodowd; maureendowd; mediafraud; medialies; modo; modowd; modown; moweddown; newyorktimes; nyt; plagiarism; schadenfreude; thenewyorktimes
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To: Pokey78
In their preferred calendar, more Gingrichian than Gregorian

Another stupid clunker from Mo. (or as she might say, more doody from Dowdy.)

41 posted on 05/28/2003 5:31:18 PM PDT by Roscoe Karns
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To: Pokey78
Bush presses the public to take him on faith...

"I did not have sex with that woman..."

-PJ

42 posted on 05/28/2003 6:43:35 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too (It's not safe yet to vote Democrat.)
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To: BerniesFriend
Does anyone think, if I may start a new line here, that CJZ would make a good Wonder Woman in a feature film???

Don't be a freak.  There is only one Wonder Woman and it's no contest who she is.

To think of anyone else is heresy.

>:P

43 posted on 05/28/2003 6:56:44 PM PDT by Psycho_Bunny
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To: Southack; gridlock; section9
>>Good grief, the poor flacks at the NY Times are so uneducated that they are confusing "decimated" with "incapacitated"<<

As much as I despise the Dowdy one, this was a direct quote from the President. But she left out a very important part of the sentence -- the President said, in essence, that those that are dead or captures are incapacitated. Same word, proper usage (IMHO) ofr the President, but Dowd is being investigated for the redaction.

Post #14 gives the skinny (thanks section9)
44 posted on 05/28/2003 7:04:27 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (Peace through Strength)
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To: Psycho_Bunny
Whoa..I was not blaspheming about Lynda Carter..but there will be a WW movie and it will star someone other than the most awesome Lynda Carter..
45 posted on 05/28/2003 7:37:07 PM PDT by BerniesFriend
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To: Pokey78
"At least she used the entire quote this time. "

But yet in her next sentence she reiterates her original misrepresentation by stating "But Al Qaeda, it became horrifyingly clear a week later in Riyadh, was not decimated;" Once again she insists upon using "Al Qaeda" as the subject instead of "the half that are dead or captured" that was originally inteaded, i.e. said.

Anyone THAT intentionally deceptive must be a miserable human indeed.

46 posted on 05/28/2003 7:48:03 PM PDT by gorush
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To: section9
I was doing Dowd a favor. I followed the posting guidelines, so kindly go be a posting Nazi somewhere else. And take your soap with you.

I can't recall a post of yours that was not well thought out.

So? You used part of a word someone didn't like? And the post was pulled? For the word "t*uc"? That word does seem a bit over the top. Unless your preface it with the word "dried up" in Dowd's case. Lubrication seems to have left that part of her anatomy. Her brain does seems lubricated. But in a bad way. I refer to Rush Limbaugh's "mouthwash" comment in that regard.

I like your posts. I would have liked to have read post #14 but it isn't here. I'd like to see it put back. But alas, like Dowd will not see Michael Douglas coming around again neither will we see post #14.

Be seeing YOU,

ITNK

47 posted on 05/28/2003 7:58:05 PM PDT by isthisnickcool (This tag line may be closer than it appears in the mirror.)
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To: section9
One of the problems with conservatives is that they think they can be polite with liberals. Liberals are not interested in being polite, they are not even interested in policy differences. They will lie, they will steal, they will dissemble, and they will not stop unless they are resolutely routed: both intellectually and at the ballot box.

Think Lautenberg, (massive) election fraud in 2000, Texas 'Rats hiding across the border, filibuster of judicial nominees, Wellstone (they tried but failed in a stupendously embarassing fashion), etc, etc

If the Pubbies tried any of these things Dowd would be winning Pulitzer's by the six pack. Without the biased media the Dems would be lucky to get 30% of the seats in Congress and those would be all the "special" districts created for Maxine Waters, Corinne Brown, Barbara Lee, et al.

Nice of the Slime to create a special mailbox to point out their lies ( retrace@nytimes.com ). It's basically admitting that they have no idea when their writers are lying, and need people smarter than themselves to point out the more egregious falsehoods.

48 posted on 05/28/2003 7:58:08 PM PDT by mcenedo
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To: Pokey78
That old hag pisses me off. Last fall we had to choose a newspaper article to refute, and naturally, I chose one of Ms. Dowd's editorials. It was the one entitled "The Emperor's New Tutor," if you remember it.

What a jag off.

49 posted on 05/28/2003 8:04:19 PM PDT by Jonez712 (I <3 America)
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To: Pokey78
If she thinks re-quoting the same statement Bush made without the sleazy distortion is going to get her off the hook, I hope she's wrong. We need to push the NYT for Discipline for Dowd over that.
50 posted on 05/28/2003 8:12:21 PM PDT by expatpat
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To: Pokey78
I have a question regarding this Dowd woman. Does she ever write columns concerning topics other than George Bush and the current administration?
51 posted on 05/28/2003 8:27:04 PM PDT by Rockpile
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To: Shermy
Hey Maureen. Look at my tagline and Choke on your own bile.
52 posted on 05/28/2003 8:47:41 PM PDT by TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig (Soccer Mom's flee the Rats for Bush in his flight suit: I call this the Moisture Factor. MF high!)
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To: Labyrinthos
What's wrong with calling Dowd a Cult?
53 posted on 05/28/2003 8:52:21 PM PDT by TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig (Soccer Mom's flee the Rats for Bush in his flight suit: I call this the Moisture Factor. MF high!)
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To: freedumb2003
No, Bush used the word "decimated" correctly. Dowd did NOT, on the other hand, use it correctly.

President Bush said that Al Qaeda is being decimated. That's correct. Everytime that you kill 1 out of every 10 of a group of people, they are being decimated.

In contrast, Dowd said that because Al Qaeda still had members alive who were capable of hitting us in Saudi Arabia, for example, that they were not decimated.

But that's incorrect. We have decimated them time and time again, so much so that half of their leaders are dead or imprisoned. We will continue to decimate them, but unlike poor Ms. Dowd, I am actually intelligent-enough to know that a decimated group can still hit back.

Had the poor tramp used the word "incapacitated", then she potentially could have made the correct assertation that Al Qaeda is not yet incapacitated. Of course, making such a statement would have been meaningless to her, as it wouldn't have furthered her Socialistic agenda nor bashed President Bush (since that's essentially what he said in the first place).

No matter. She didn't even use the word "incapacitated". Instead, she claimed, erroneously, that Al Qaeda clearly hadn't been "decimated".

She's wrong. She didn't use even so much as the correct word, and she also misquoted President Bush in her original version of this now-sanitized article.

She's a hack. She's unqualified to write for any large-circulation publication because she's completely, and I mean it when I say completely, unobjective.

She has a powerful job at a powerful publication only because Leftist radicals have taken control of the NY Times.

54 posted on 05/28/2003 9:36:06 PM PDT by Southack (Media bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
>>She's a hack. She's unqualified <<

Yes and Yes.

55 posted on 05/28/2003 10:16:30 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (Peace through Strength)
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To: freedumb2003; Howlin; Doctor Raoul; JohnHuang2
NY Times caught lying about Miguel Estrada
56 posted on 05/29/2003 5:37:50 PM PDT by Southack (Media bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Pokey78
Can you believe how long Mo Dowd has stayed in the tank for the Democrats in exchange for just one pity poke from Michael Douglas?

CLINTON, BEGALA & CARVILLE CHORUS: "Come on Mike, every player knows there are times you have to give up the body for the good of the team."

57 posted on 05/29/2003 6:02:48 PM PDT by Doctor Raoul (The "Anti-War Leaders" Have Blood On Their Hands, look and you'll find, they are NOT anti-war)
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