[xzins]

the other guys are worse...

No. I mean an accurate picture of what was taking place in Iraq, insurgency, economy, Korea, Katrina, any issue.

They consistently allowed the media to get the jump on defining what was taking place, and they consistently were unable to get a positive perspective out over the message of the anti-Bush media.

Rush is part of the alternative media. He has a great audience. I love to listen to him.

But, they don't yet have the audience size or reach of the MSM.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

No. I mean an accurate picture of what was taking place in Iraq, insurgency, economy, Korea, Katrina, any issue.

IMHO, what's "taking place" in Iraq is a bleeding suck-hole which is already costing the Republic more Treasure per month than the Vietnam War, and which is demanding a vicious tribute in Blood as well -- yes, I am aware that we have suffered "only" about 3,000 dead; but that's largely a function of superior US Kevlar over the key head and torso areas... we have suffered over 20,000 wounded already, kids coming home alive (thanks to body armor and the heroic efforts of combat medics) -- but with their arms, legs, and faces blown off.

Wars are seductive as women in the night. Past midnight in February of 1967 we stood, the platoon and I, on the flight line at El Toro Marine Air Station, gateway to Asia. On the tarmac big jets howled and moaned. The smell of burned jet fuel blew in the Pacific breeze. We felt the exhilaration of being part of something huge moving in the darkness, of going to the action, of leaving the mundane. The attraction of war verges on the lascivious. It gets into your blood. And so we went. Young men always go.... Yet the wounds will remain. Arms do not grow back. For the paralyzed there will never be girlfriends, dancing, rolling in the grass with children. The blind will adapt as best they can. Those with merely a missing leg will count themselves lucky. They will hobble about, managing to lead semi-normal lives, and people will say, “How well he handles it.” An admirable freak. For others it will be less good. A colostomy bag is a sorry companion on a wedding night.

I once watched the first meeting between a young Marine from the South, blind, much of his face shot away, and his high school sweetheart who had come from Tennessee to Bethesda Naval Hospital to see him.

Hatred comes easily.

These men will come to hate.
It will not be the Iraqis they hate.
This we do not talk about.

(Fred Reed, USMC [retired], SCUBA Editor Soldier of Fortune: "War", "Wars and their Aftermath")

I have a certain pastor friend, a former combat medic as I recall, with whom I disagree on several important Theological matters; but whom I nonetheless respect as quite a bit wiser and more experienced in life than myself (a young Civilian pup barely out of my twenties). He once disagreed with a lawyerly young Calvinist, who maintained the necessity of Occupation on the basis of the Colin Powell Doctrine ("You Break it, you Buy it"), by arguing instead that the best way to deal with an aggressive, anti-American Tyrant was to "go in, cuss, break some stuff -- and then leave."... with the understanding that the New Government could do whatever it wanted, so long as they were aware that America had plenty more Daisy-Cutters in the arsenal if we had any more trouble from them.

I think that most Americans feel that my pastor friend -- let's call him "X" -- was pretty much correct: "go in, cuss, break some stuff -- and then leave."

By contrast -- 3,000 Dead and 20,000 Wounded later, "Mission Accomplished" feels like a bloody fraud... an unconscionable Bait and Switch.

George W. Bush did not win the Republican Majority of 1994 -- Conservatives did. But George W. Bush did lose the Republican Majority of 2006... he hung like an albatross 'round their necks, and they suffered for his "No Confidence" Vote.