[Enterprise]

"Environmental groups, ... said the president is simply using Western wildfires to justify increased logging."

So what's wrong with increased logging?

[fuzzthatwuz]

"So what's wrong with increased logging?"

Many unemployed loggers have been asking the same question!

[Grampa Dave]

Club Sierra and the other enviral groups ultimate goal is zero logging in any national or state forests.

They will not even allow salvage logging in forests that have burnt up due to their lawsuits after fires to prevent even the removal of dead trees.

99.99999999999% of enviralists are Watermelons (Green on the outside and very communist red on the inside). So they hate America, Americans who use wood products or make a living harvesting even dead trees. They hate capitalism!

[alaskanfan]

It's a renewable resource, that and the fact that people will be put to work really gets to those greenies.

[r9etb]

So what's wrong with increased logging?

It's worth noting the spin battle going on here.

Bush wants "thinning," the enviros denounce it as "logging."

"Thinning" suggests nothing more than an "agricultural operation" that leaves forests basically intact. It says nothing about whether there's any profit to be made by logging companies (there is).

"Logging" suggests large-tract clear-cutting, as has been the usual policy in the northwestern forests over the past couple of decades. This allows the enviros to characterize the loggers as by evil profit-seeking environment destroyers.

The political battle here is whether the media will call it "thinning" or "logging," which would leave viewers with one or the other of the impressions noted above. Assuming he can get it through in the next couple of months, I think Bush will carry the battle on this one, and the enviros are going to get waxed.

The next battle will occur when the enviros begin accusing the USFS of allowing "logging" to occur in supposedly "thinned" areas.