William Chirolas -- World News Trust
Oct 29, 2006 -- Candy Crowley in the CNN election series "Broken Government" seemed to see no reason to blame the media for what she skillfully showed were GOP lies about Democrats that have been sold to the American people.
She did not seem to think the fact that Democrats must now shake the "wuss factor" had anything to do with the media simply repeating the GOP talking point of the day in their newscasts, with nary a comment about how the media knew the talking point to be a lie.
Indeed much of her piece was about how the Democrats are the party of elected combat veterans, while the only violence almost any elected GOPer has seen has been at the movies (there a few, a very few, exceptions). Bush is now selling again the idea that you need the “chickenhawk” GOP to protect the country because the Democrats do not know how to do so or will just chose to not protect the country. The Bush mantra of "The Democrats do not have a plan to win in Iraq" is shown on TV with no newscaster pointing out that the GOP have no plan to win in Iraq.
So why does the media allow folks to think that the Democrats want an America that's totally defenseless? Why does the media allow the GOP to get away with spreading the word that Democrats want to under fund or under use our military?
Now to be fair to the media, Rep. Lynn Woolsey and 15 other members of the House Progressive Caucus have introduced legislation for a $60 billion cut in defense spending, taking away some of the unneeded toys for military boys contracts that the GOP has been using to give welfare to their Military Industrial Corporate sponsors -- the legislation diverting $60 billion from the Pentagon budget so as to allocate it to social investment, renewable energy and humanitarian aid ($10 billion annually to provide health care coverage for millions of uninsured children, $10 billion a year to be spent on modernizing schools, $10 billion to be invested annually in renewable energy, etc.).
But the larger picture over 54 years is one of the GOP always destroying the defense budget and cutting down the military when they have the Presidency, with the technical exception of Reagan who actually implemented Carter's 1980 five-year plan for the Pentagon. Today G. W. Bush is the reason our soldiers don't have enough equipment and Bush is the reason we have excess deaths due to too few troops fighting the war.
The record shows that the Democrats (Kennedy, Johnson and Carter) increased defense spending, while Ike, Nixon, and Ford, and Bush41 cut the budget. And the GOP is proud of those cuts (GHW Bush: The reductions I have approved will save us an additional $50 billion over the next five years. By 1997 we will have cut defense by 30 percent since I took office." --State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 1992
And Rumsfield: "Overall, since I've been Secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion.... And now we're adding to that another $50 billion."
And Cheney: "I recommended that we cancel the AH-64 program two years out. That would save $1.6 billion in procurement and $200 million in spares over the next five years." --Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jan. 31, 1992, after which Cheney complained about a then-Democratically controlled Congress for refusing to cut more weapons systems. ""Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You've directed me to buy more M-1s, F-14s, and F-16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them." --Secretary of Defense Cheney, testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Feb. 1, 1992).
They brag about plans to cut Army divisions by one-third, Navy aircraft carriers by one-fifth, and active armed forces by half a million men and women, to say nothing of "major reductions" in fighter wings and strategic bombers (testimony of then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell).
And now we have G. W. Bush in his 2005 budget saying the Pentagon plans to cut costly weapons programs such as an Air Force advanced fighter plane, a stealthy Navy destroyer and the next generation of nuclear submarines, with even the favored idiocy of the Bush years, the Bush unworkable missile defense program, losing billions of dollars in funding in coming years - if you believe Bush tells the truth in his budget. See here, here and here.
When the GOP wanted the media to sell the idea that Senator John Kerry "voted to kill every military appropriation for the development and deployment of every weapons systems since 1988," did they check with recorded history, like this web site did, and then tell the public that the GOP were liars? Why does the media forget that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has opposed legislative changes that would force the army to permanently increase its so-called "end strength" or numbers, and that Dick Cheney once moved to cut the armed forces by a half-million troops, and to shut down more than 40 military bases that, as a result, would no longer be needed. See here and here.
Today these (GOP Non-) protectors of our military have said, "No Bankruptcy Protection for Troops" as U.S. Senate Republicans blocked an effort by Democrats to shield military personnel from changes to bankruptcy law that would force more debtors to repay their creditors. Today the Pentagon tells us that Veterans' Benefits are "hurtful" to National Security (Wall Street Journal (1-25-05), Pentagon official David Chu).
Rather than selling GOP lies about how Democrats are "wusses," perhaps the media could point out the increasing number of veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan ending up homeless with psychological trauma as they face high housing costs, gaps in pay between civilians and the military which mean ex-servicemen cannot save, and the lag in getting VA assistance, all not being addressed by the GOP.
Heck, W. Bush's budget more than doubled the co-payment charged to many veterans for prescription drugs, requiring some to pay a new fee of $250 a year for the privilege of using government health care. Things as simple as $20 tourniquets were not given our troops by the Bush boys, so troops died for lack of a simple first-aid tool so as to save less than $2 million, because that $2 million was needed to help offset those tax cuts for the rich. Oh, by the way -- when are those "media critics" like CNN/Washington Post's Howie Kurtz going to discuss any of the above -- or are they the GOP's mediawhores like they appear to be.
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William Chirolas brings 40 years of real-world business experience in local, state, national, and international tax, pensions, and finance to the world of blogging. A graduate of MIT, he calls the Boston area home, except when visiting kids and grandkids. He can be reached at: \n This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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