There’s an email circulating that starts off with another of those typical “the media won’t tell you this” lines. In this particular case, the accusation is that the story “doesn’t have the shock effect.”

But as usual, there’s a little more to it than that…something that the “they” who composed this email really don’t want you to know.

The story centers on a statue of an American soldier, apparently grieving at the loss of a fellow soldier and being comforted by a young child. According to the email, the statue, which will eventually be shipped from Iraq to a military museum in Texas, was created by an Iraqi artist named Kalat.

This Kalat, the story goes, had suffered the torturous existence of being forced by Saddam Hussein to make “many hundreds of bronze busts of Saddam that dotted Baghdad.” The email then reports that Kalat was so grateful for “the Americans [sic] liberation of his country” that he melted three of the busts to create this memorial to fallen American soldiers and worked on the statue for many months.

Out of the goodness of his heart.

The email then asks and answers its own question:

“Do you know why we don’t hear about this in the news? Because it is heart warming and praise worthy. The media avoids it because it does not have the shock effect.”

Or so “they” want you to believe…while they deliver this little call to action: “But we can do something about it. We can pass this along to as many people as we can in honor of all our brave military who are making a difference.”

A quick visit to myth-busting website snopes.com, which, curiously enough, is the kind of place these self-appointed media-condemning “truth” spreaders never seem to bother to go, tells a somewhat different story about this Kalat and his artistic creation.

The website declares it a case of “real photograph, inaccurate description:”

“…the accompanying text is very misleading. The Iraqi sculptor was not ‘forced by Saddam Hussein to make the many hundreds of bronze busts of Saddam,’ he did not produce the memorial shown because he was ‘so grateful that the Americans liberated his country,’ and the monument was not his idea. Members of the U.S. Army paid the sculptor, who had previously worked on a few other Saddam statues, to create the work pictured according to a design of their choosing.”

And believe me, the tall tale only gets better — or worse, depending on your point of view — from there. Why did this Kalat really agree to build the statue, and how does he really feel about American soldiers? Read it for yourself…but be warned: the “they” who created this email certainly don’t want you to know!

I certainly have no problem with “supporting the troops” and honoring the men and women of our military. But there’s a big difference between paying tribute and spreading propaganda.

What’s on their agenda? What are they trying to get you to believe, despite what the apparent facts are? And why would they make false accusations while demanding the “whole” truth?

Why won’t the media really report this story? Maybe because it’s inaccurate, exaggerated and just plain false. Sometimes the media does gets it right.

Here is an excerpt from one of Andy Rooney’s essays.  The topic, appropriately enough, is Memorial Day.  This was from a segment first broadcast on May 29, 2005:

“Tomorrow is Memorial Day, the day we have set aside to honor by remembering all the Americans who have died fighting for the thing we like the most about our America: the freedom we have to live as we please.

No official day to remember is adequate for something like that. It’s too formal. It gets to be just another day on the calendar. No one would know from Memorial Day that Richie M., who was shot through the forehead coming onto Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, wore different color socks on each foot because he thought it brought him good luck.

No one would remember on Memorial Day that Eddie G. had promised to marry Julie W. the day after he got home from the war, but didn’t marry Julie because he never came home from the war. Eddie was shot dead on an un-American desert island, Iwo Jima.

For too many Americans, Memorial Day has become just another day off. There’s only so much time any of us can spend remembering those we loved who have died, but the men, boys really, who died in our wars deserve at least a few moments of reflection during which we consider what they did for us.

They died.

We use the phrase “gave their lives,” but they didn’t give their lives. Their lives were taken from them.

There is more bravery at war than in peace, and it seems wrong that we have so often saved this virtue to use for our least noble activity - war. The goal of war is to cause death to other people.

Because I was in the Army during World War II, I have more to remember on Memorial Day than most of you. I had good friends who were killed.

Charley Wood wrote poetry in high school. He was killed when his Piper Cub was shot down while he was flying as a spotter for the artillery.

Bob O’Connor went down in flames in his B-17.

Obie Slingerland and I were best friends and co-captains of our high school football team. Obie was killed on the deck of the Saratoga when a bomb that hadn’t dropped exploded as he landed.

I won’t think of them anymore tomorrow, Memorial Day, than I think of them any other day of my life.

Remembering doesn’t do the remembered any good, of course. It’s for ourselves, the living. I wish we could dedicate Memorial Day, not to the memory of those who have died at war, but to the idea of saving the lives of the young people who are going to die in the future if we don’t find some new way - some new religion maybe - that takes war out of our lives.

That would be a Memorial Day worth celebrating.”

I don’t know that a new religion is the answer.  I suspect that if more religious people actually behaved as if they were, that in itself would be a good place to start.

“Age is catching up with us and time is running out.”

—William Paynter, 91
World War II Veteran

A front-page story in Sunday’s Post and Courier covers several groups’ efforts to preserve the personal stories of veterans before they are lost forever.

Once there were 16 million U.S. World War II veterans. That number has shrunk to about 2.5 million. Some estimates predict that by 2020, there will be no more WWII veterans still alive.

There are only 12 verified World War I veterans* still alive, and just two of them live in the United States. Both are 107 years old. The oldest of the dozen lives in the UK and is 111. He is also the oldest verified man in Europe.

These men have had a lifetime to relive the horrors of war that they witnessed long before there was a condition known as “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

They have spent a lifetime trying to suppress the painful memories of watching their comrades, their friends, die in service of the country.

I suspect even the passage of decades doesn’t make that a great deal easier when those memories come rushing to the surface.

There’s no practical way to tabulate the human story of each and every loss this country has suffered in every war ever fought. Reciting a bunch of numbers seems almost inhuman.

Because it isn’t about numbers; it’s about people.

Do you think you can spare a few minutes today to think about those fallen soldiers yourself? It isn’t the least you can do, but it’s pretty close.

* This is information according to Wikipedia, so it may or may not be completely accurate. Take it as you will.

Just a few minutes ago, a bulletin from the New York Times reported that a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed four U.S. soldiers, bringing the official American death toll, as tabulated by the Associated Press, to 4,000.

The grim milestone came on the same day that rockets and mortars pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone, underscoring the fragile security situation and the resilience of both Sunni and Shiite extremist groups despite an overall lull in violence.

Excuse me, but isn’t this famous “Green Zone” the same one that John McCain toured in an attempt to prove how safe the streets of Iraq have become?

It was not a dark and stormy night, although perhaps that would have been a more appropriate setting, obvious cliché aside. In fact, it was an otherwise quiet morning in Washington, around 9:00am, when President George W. Bush gave the executive order from the Situation Room that launched Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As you must surely know, that event happened five years ago today.

It was followed, less than two months later, with Bush standing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, a banner that read, “Mission Accomplished” in the background.

One may continue to wonder why, if the mission had truly been accomplished on May 1, 2003, we are marking our fifth anniversary in Iraq amid warnings from the Bush administration that pulling troops out too soon could spell certain disaster there and here at home.

I was told by someone I work with that they had heard someone on another station — possibly one of the cable networks — say that today we “celebrate” the anniversary of the war in Iraq.

I’m glad it wasn’t someone on our station, because I’d have had to get up, walk out of my office to the newsroom, walk up to that person and smack them right upside the head.

We commemorate such an event, but with casualties around the 4,000 mark and the price tag that grows by about $200 Million every day, there seems to be little to “celebrate.”  To add fuel to that fire, I note that one of the candidates for president says it’d be fine with him to keep our troops there for 100 years.  Wonder what kind of celebration would be appropriate for that?

I salute the men and women who have served or who continue to serve this country. “Support the troops” is a phrase that is constantly bandied about in political fights from both sides of the argument.

On a day like this, supporting the troops has nothing to do with politics.

It has to do with saying thanks to the men and women who have done the work that many of the rest of us never had to do. And they’re the reason for that.

Thanks to all of them.

What do you say on Memorial Day? Especially while an unpopular war continues to divide the country so bitterly that little if anything seems to get done because of all of the arguing.

You send your condolences to the families who’ve lost loved ones. Not that there is anything anyone can say that can make it any easier.

You thank soldiers any time you encounter one, because you know that they could face the same fate serving this country.

You talk to kids to make sure the next generation understands what those who have come and gone before them have sacrificed so that they can live in a nation that values freedom so highly. (Depending on which freedoms we’re talking about in a given moment, that is.)

But what do you say to the soldiers who have died? If you could talk to a soldier who had lost his or her life while serving the country, what would you say? Would you thank them? Would you apologize? Would you look down at your shoes and shift your weight, hoping that words might eventually come?

I think I’d ask the soldier about their life. Their family. Their hopes. Their dreams.

These are the things that always seem to be lost in the haze of controversy. We get so worked up over numbers — how many troops have died since the war began, how many more have died this year than last, how many less have died in this war than in others — that we seem to forget so easily that each one of them was a person who had the same fears, ambitions, and desire to live that all of us have.

Some of them made a decision to volunteer for service. That doesn’t mean their death was “deserved.” It doesn’t mean, no matter how right you think a war happens to be, that their deaths were any less tragic.

The War in Iraq makes a lot more people pause to think about Memorial Day. If there wasn’t a war, would you be as likely to take the time? If we weren’t still losing troops, would you notice when one of these “military holidays” roll around? Or would you just enjoy your day off and pay no attention to the occasion?

I heard someone today wish someone else a “Happy Memorial Day.” Memorial Day isn’t a day that should be happy. It should be solemn. It should be a day of respect that we spend counting the sacrifices our soldiers have made carrying out missions our country deemed — for whatever reasons — necessary.

The ironic thing is that these same soldiers, in performing those functions and giving their lives to see them carried out, provided the rest of us with the ability to do whatever we want to do on a day like this, without ever noticing that the price tag for freedom in America is high.

The most recent Patrick’s Place Poll asked who you’d vote for if the election was right that minute. The results were pretty interesting.

For one thing, there was one clear Republican winner — probably not who you think! — and two strong Democratic contenders. Because of the amount of votes received by the runner-up on the Democratic side, the winner was only able to tie the standout Republican candidate. That should give everyone pause, though there’s still plenty of time to get to one single candidate on each side.

The top Republican vote-getter wasn’t Rudy Guiliani, regarded by some as the most likely candidate for ‘08. It wasn’t John McCain, who many others think will surpass Guiliani. Instead, the top Republican in the poll was Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, the man who replaced Sen. Bob Dole. He got 24% of the vote.

Guiliani followed with 11%, with McCain getting a close 10%. Mitt Romney claimed only 2%.

Hillary Clinton tied Brownback with 24% of the vote. But there wasn’t as large a spread between her and the runner-up. Barack Obama had 16% of the vote. Together, the two came up with two-fifths of the total votes. Behind Obama, John Edwards got a surprisingly-low 6%, while Al Gore did even worse with only 5%. Retired General Wesley Clark received just 3%.

It’s worth pointing out the irony of the two lowest vote getters on the Democratic side: remember the big deal that John Kerry made of his military service in 2004 (after having denounced the tactic when it was used against Clinton in 1992)? Remember the cheers when he saluted and said he was ready to “report for duty?” Gore and Clark are the only two Democratic candidates in the poll who have military experience, and yet they get the lowest amount of votes on that side.

And if you’re keeping the ultimate score, you will have realized that regardless of specific candidate, Republicans got 47% of the vote while Democrats claimed victory with 53%. It will be interesting to see how those numbers change as we narrow the number of candidates between now and November, 2008.

Let’s review, shall we?

“We’re making steady progress. A free Iraq will mean a peaceful world. And it’s very important for us to stay the course, and we will stay the course.”

–President Bush
July 10, 2003

“But we will stay the course. We will do what is right. We will make sure that a free Iraq emerges, not only for our own security, but for the sake of free peoples everywhere. A free Iraq will change the Middle East. A free Iraq will make the world more peaceful. A free Iraq will make America more secure. We will not be shaken by thugs and terrorists.”

–President Bush
April 5, 2004

“Look, this is hard work. It’s hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And, yet, we must stay the course, because the end result is in our nation’s interest.”

–President Bush
April 13, 2004

“Iraq is the central front in this war on terror. If we leave the streets of Baghdad before the job is done, we will have to face the terrorists in our own cities. We will stay the course, we will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed, and victory in Iraq will be a major ideological triumph in the struggle of the 21st century.”

-President Bush
August 30, 2006

“Well, hey, listen, we’ve never been ’stay the course,’ George. We have been — we will complete the mission, we will do our job, and help achieve the goal, but we’re constantly adjusting to tactics. Constantly.”

–President Bush, to George Stephanopoulos
This Week

Granted, he did say this last year:

“Some critics continue to assert that we have no plan in Iraq except to, ’stay the course.’ If by ’stay the course,’ they mean we will not allow the terrorists to break our will, they are right. If by ’stay the course,’ they mean we will not permit al Qaeda to turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban — a safe haven for terrorism and a launching pad for attacks on America — they are right, as well. If by ’stay the course’ they mean that we’re not learning from our experiences, or adjusting our tactics to meet the challenges on the ground, then they’re flat wrong.”

–President Bush
November 30, 2005

Maybe the reason more people aren’t screaming, “Flip-Flop!” is that they’re glad that it finally appears that some re-thinking may not be beyond the realm of possibility.

“They summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and virtue.”

- General James A. Garfield,
at the first national Memorial Day Observance, 1866.

We can’t even agree on Memorial Day.

When the holiday was officially introduced in 1866,¹ it was created as a way to honor Union soldiers in a way similar to observances that already existed in the former Confederate states. By 1868, it moved to a set date of May 30. And so it continued, until 1968’s Uniform Holidays Bill, 100 years later, which moved four holidays — Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Columbus Day and Veterans Day — to specific Mondays in order to create convenient three-day weekends.

But some veterans groups do not appreciate the long weekends because they feel that it’s too easy to forget the sacrifices. In 2002, the Veterans of Foreign Wars took exception to the long weekends:

“Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public’s nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.”

Since 1999, legislation has been introduced, and defeated, to move Memorial Day back to its traditional day of May 30th, so that Americans would have a more meaningful reminder of the day’s purpose.

Somehow, I think that no matter what date you insert the holiday, whether in the middle of the week or at the beginning or end of a weekend, there are always going to be those who take no interest in the day’s true meaning. To some, it is just a holiday; the reason for their day off isn’t remotely important to them, so long as they get their day.

At the very least, the long weekend gives those who genuinely do care about the day’s real meaning the opportunity to travel to local observances or to visit their ancestors’ final resting places. No matter how wrong it is to forget why Memorial Day was created, you cannot force people to celebrate with genuine interest if they just don’t have it.

More than 2,400 hundred Americans have died in the current war. Some of them believed genuinely in the work they gave their lives to complete. Others did not. But they all share the same tragic outcome, and they are all deserving of our respect…at least one day’s worth.

The photo above is from the Fredricksburg Battlefield cemetary, in which thousands of Union soldiers who died there are interred. I have also posted a photo of the Civil War Memorial built to honor Confederate soldiers at Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetary over at “Patrick’s Portfolio.”

¹ The first unofficial Memorial Day celebration is believed to have occurred in 1865, held in Charleston, South Carolina, by freed slaves who wanted to commemorate the Union soldiers who died there.

This is the memorial erected in memory of Civil War soldiers at Hollywood Cemetary in Richmond. It stands 90 feet high and was build in 1869 to honor more than 18,000 Confederate soldiers who were lost. Union soldiers are also buried here.

Engraved in a stone on the side pictured are the words, “Numini et Patriae Asto,” which, translated, means “They stood for God and their country,” a poignant postscript to the defeat they gave their lives to prevent.

What does it mean to support the troops?

Yes, this topic again.

Does supporting the troops mean that you automatically support every mission they do, every act they take, 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Or does it mean something as simple as being grateful for the work they’ve done in the name of this country, or praying that not another single one of them dies in Iraq? Does one, to support the troops, have to start a drive in their neighborhood to send troops goods from home, or send letters to those soldiers who happen to want penpals to remind them that they’re being thought about?

The answer is simple: it depends on the person.

Does one have to be a Republican to care about the troops? Do Democrats hope our soldiers will be lost just to make their political points?

Say it with me, everyone: Of course not!

I was taking my morning blogjog and came upon this post from Neil over at the Blue Voice. The first line stopped me cold:

“The very people who sent Troops to Iraq for nothing — and in insufficient number and with inadequate equipment — these very same people slap a sticker on their bumper and claim to ’support the Troops.’”

Neil goes on to add:

“They have their own version of the big lie. They beat their chests and proclaim themselves to be good patriots because they support sending Troops to Iraq for Bush, whatever his real reasons might be for doing so. They claim to support the Troops — but — they really do not care.”

Whatever his real reasons might be for sending the troops into Iraq, the notion of supporting the troops doesn’t require the blind following of the president who sent them there. Ironically, Neil, in arguing that the real support of troops comes in the form of questioning the decisions that led to war — and thereby, criticism of the administration — proves this very point.

So if it is unfair to equate being critical of the administration with being unpatriotic, logically, it is just as unfair to make the claim that those who put those shiny bumper stickers on their car automatically has to be a “Bushie” or must be “unconcerned” about the dangers our soldiers face. If supporting the troops really means anything from charitable work on their behalf to questioning the leader that put them in their present situation, you can’t reasonably complain about being viewed unpatriotic if you do question the administration while at the same time you lump all “Support the Troops” advocates into either the Republican camp.

After all, if one is so wrong, the other must be, too, right?

There is one line I do agree with:

“They have no right to criticize us who have opposed this war from the beginning - to question our patriotism - to accuse us of not supporting our men and women in Iraq.”

We all have the right, and the responsibility to be critical when we don’t agree. Lives are at stake. It’s not unpatriotic to question the administration.

If anything is unpatriotic, it’s the pretense that we must only exist in a “we” versus “they” society, that it has to be one way or the other. Both parties reinforce it at every possible turn to keep another party from gaining any real momentum. We spend all our time refuting anything the other says, often without taking the time to even listen. We wouldn’t know the truth when the other party says it, because by the time half of the speech has been delivered, the response is already posted.

But when our servicemen step onto the battlefield — whether you believe the battle is warranted or not — the emblem they wear on their uniform isn’t of a giant elephant. It’s the American flag. Our servicemen do not represent the GOP: they represent us. All of us. Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between.

Like it or not, the troops — who are either being forced to participate in a war based on lies, or who are protecting our safety by fighting the War on Terror — are doing that work for you, regardless of your party affiliation.

My comment included this:

Is it fair to question the circumstances by which they were deployed? Absolutely.Is it right to ask why they don’t have more protection? Definitely.

Is it good form to question how few have been sent? Sure, though it might seem insincere if you also spend a lot of time complaining about the number and cost that have already been sent.

Is it accurate for an American citizen to say that the soldiers there are doing what OTHERS sent them to do? Unfortunately for political debaters, no.

They’re doing what WE ALL sent them there to do, and they’ll be doing it until WE ALL figure out a way to bring them back with as litle further cost as possible.

Generalizations and name calling, which long ago eclipsed baseball as the Great American Pastime, isn’t the way to bring both sides together. All it does is keep both sides from working together to dig through the rhetoric and look for the solutions to the problem: potentially the very solutions that will bring the troops home.

Sometimes, denouncing the other side becomes such a sport that exactly what’s being denounced doesn’t even matter. There’s no real discussion anymore. There’s only the choosing of sides based on who gets the best zingers in.

Both sides do it. Regularly.

And that what’s so unpatriotic in my book.

Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother-turned-political-activist, continues to camp outside President Bush’s ranch in Texas, demanding audience with the president.

“I want to ask the president, ‘Why did you kill my son?’” she has said.

I’d like to ask her why she possibly thinks anyone would meet with her when she’s making statements like that. There is such a thing as decorum and diplomacy. Grieving mother or not, she must know she would have gotten further in her efforts to meet with Bush had she not made such a statement. (I’m sure she does know that.)

I’m sure she also realizes that such incendiary soundbites also make for good press, which she is not only getting, but encouraging at every possible opportunity. As the San Francisco Chronicle put it so well, “…the image of an anguished 48-year-old mother standing outside the vacation home of the most powerful leader in the world, asking him to explain her son’s death, is compelling….”

According to an article from CNN, Sheehan arrived in Crawford aboard a bus painted red, white and blue and emblazoned with the words, “Impeachment Tour.”

That’s a sure way to get you a cordial meeting with the president!

But the Chronicle brings up another important point: her protest sets up a no-win situation for Bush. (I’m sure she knows that, too.) By granting her the audience she demands, Bush potentially angers the 1850 other families who have suffered losses in Iraq but who haven’t been as vocal about it. Wouldn’t they have the right to the same treatment? Giving her the attention she is demanding also strengthens her political clout.

By refusing to meet with her, as he has done so far, he appears heartless by not having the time (during his five-week vacation that she has been so quick to mention) to meet with a Gold Star mother.

Either way, he looks like the bad guy. Either way, she is a hero in the eyes of those who oppose the war or do not trust Bush. Lest you think that Sheehan isn’t aware of the potential notoriety, she received assistance from Bob Fertik of Democrats.com, in setting up the website MeetWithCindy.org, from which visitors can not only donate to help defray the costs to send others to Crawford to join the protest, but can even find quick links to email addresses for the major media outlets and the White House.

But as easy as it is, we shouldn’t let the protest itself make us lose sight of her son, 24-year-old Casey Sheehan, who was killed five days after he arrived in Sadr City, Iraq. He had joined the army in 2000, never imagining that he would see combat, according to the Associated Press.

What?

With growing concerns over global terrorism in 2000, with the “unfinished business” of Gulf War I, President George H. W. Bush’s son running for the White House, and the widespread conspiracy theories that had people convinced that Bush was just looking for an excuse to “finish the job,” how could anyone join the military without any expectation that war wasn’t a possibility? The possibility of war, even in a time of complete peace, would be the first thing on my mind.

Of course, it was on Cindy’s mind. She begged him not to go, she says. “I said, ‘I’ll take you to Canada’ … but he said, ‘Mom, I have to go. It’s my duty. My buddies are going.’”

She’d take him to Canada? Do I recall something about Purple Hearts and draft-dodgers from the last election? Sheehan supported Kerry in the last election. Did she applaud those reports about Bush’s lack of military experience while her candidate paraded veterans for all to see? Did she cheer when Democrats denounced the avoidance of military service, (after suffering amnesia and conveniently forgetting that position when Bill Clinton ran in 1992)? Avoiding military service doesn’t sound so bad when you have a personal stake in the outcome, do they?

I know what you’re thinking. That was before the war started. That was before 9/11. Cindy says her son joined the Army because he was promised that he could finish his college degree. (And had he not been killed overseas, he would have.)

But it is interesting to learn that after 9/11, and after the War in Iraq began, Casey re-enlisted in August of 2003 because ”he didn’t want his buddies to do the job by themselves.” He wasn’t in Iraq then, of course, but the threat of being deployed was very real by then. Casey made the decision to stay on when he could have come home. Undoubtedly, he felt that the potential cost might not be too high.

Cindy says she never considered Iraq a threat to America, in an October interview at Buzzflash.com. Casey told his mom, “It’s my job.” Apparently, in the final letter that he didn’t have time to complete, he wrote that it looked like it was going to be an “easy year” of deployment.

Sheehan, in case you haven’t heard, did meet with Bush in June of 2004. She was among the grieving families who met with him at Fort Lewis in Washington. But since then, her feelings have shifted from shock to anger, in part because of ”various reports that have disputed some of the Bush administration’s justifications of the war.”

But she did get to speak to him personally then. Her exchange, as she tells it, went like this:

“(Bush) called me ‘Mom’ because he didn’t know my name, and he didn’t know my son’s name — he just knows that he’s meeting with these families that have lost loved ones. He said, ‘Mom, I can’t imagine the pain you’re going through.’ I said, ‘I think you can imagine it a little bit, Mr. President. You have daughters. How would you feel if one of them was killed?’”

I told him, “Trust me, Mr. President –- you don’t want to go there.”

He said, “You’re right. I don’t.”

What more can she say now? What more will it accomplish now, other than forwarding her agenda?

She has every right to be angry and grieving. She has every right to demand answers, although I think she’ll never get the answers she needs in this life. She has every right to protest and speak out about what she believes, and I do applaud her for taking advantage of the right to protest that all of us have.

But when you step back and take a detached look at the situation, you come to the inescapable conclusion that a meeting with Bush would be pointless. I’m sure Sheehan is convinced that Bush believes he is right no matter what. If he met with her and admitted that the war is wrong like she wants him to, she would never accept his explanation as genuine, and even then, what would it accomplish? Her son would still be lost. If he meets with her and tries to present evidence the rest of us haven’t seen, it would merely be, in her mind, more fabrication to justify his war. She doesn’t trust him, which means that she falls in line with roughly half the country, according to a recent poll. Are we to believe that she ever will?

As set in his ways, as convinced as he is that he is right, Sheehan is as convinced that she is right.

I am reminded of a quote by Jeff Jarrett, who, oddly enough was speaking of a different (and far more harmless) kind of “warfare,” professional wrestling. His quote is still quite applicable in this battle being waged in Texas when you consider how far apart both sides of this war are and how far apart both sides likely always will be:

“For those who don’t believe, no explanation will do; for those who do believe, no explanation is necessary.”

And so it continues.

Many people have become concerned about the possibility of the government reinstating the draft. A rash of rumors and E-mails have been spreading, threatening to turn the whispers of concern into the next urban legend. This sudden concern followed reports that at least two different proposals that had been made in Congress sought to return the draft.

A recent AOL survey questioned voters about which candidate they thought was most likely to restore the draft. When reporters recently asked John Kerry whether he thought George W. Bush would end up restoring the draft, he didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either, further fueling that fire of speculation.

Keep this in mind for a moment as we briefly change topics.

Many Democrats took great exception to Dick Cheney’s comment that implied that choosing the wrong man for the presidency (in his mind, Kerry) could result in America being attacked again by terrorists. Many claimed that Cheney’s comment was completely out of line, because he was using fear as a ploy to unfairly influence people’s vote.

I recently heard a voter being interviewed on a national newscast and I was surprised to hear her say that she couldn’t imagine 9/11 having happened if Al Gore had been in office. I’m not sure how she arrived at such an absurd conclusion; the Oklahoma City bombing, tied to domestic terrorism, and the World Trade Center bombing, tied to Osama bin Laden, both occurred while Clinton and Gore were in office. Gore proposed tougher airport security measures as Vice President in response to the growing threat of terror, then backed off. It wouldn’t be fair to blame 9/11 on Gore’s failure to push those recommendations until they became requirements, but on the other hand, one cannot rule out the possibility that tougher security prior to 9/11 might have at least hindered the terrorists from that particular method of mass murder.

We’re talking about terrorists so willing to kill Americans that the prospect of dying for the cause doesn’t seem like a high price. I really don’t think they are remotely concerned about whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the White House at the time. Making their point (and accomplishing their goal) would seem to be their main preoccupation.

I thought Cheney’s comment was unreasonable as well. The question isn’t whether one candidate or the other will prevent us from being attacked again by simply being elected, or whether the election itself of one candidate or the other will encourage terrorists to strike again: I think that if a Republican is elected, terrorists will have a motive to strike again to dispel the myth that Republicans will prevent us from ever being attacked again. Likewise, I think that if a Democrat is elected, the same terrorists will have a motive to strike again to demonstrate that we are vulnerable no matter what we do. Either way, an attack would have a demoralizing effect on the country, which seems to be part of their terrorists master plan. The question we should be asking is how each candidate will handle the next attack when it does come.

But in any case, Cheney’s critics said that it was tasteless and inexcusable to have made such a remark. Keep that in mind, too.

Now, back to the draft issue. There are two bills that have been proposed to return the draft. You might be surprised to learn that the two primary sponsors of the two bills are Sen. Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, and Representative Charles Rangel of New York, both of whom are Democrats. The bills in Congress are gaining almost no support, but they’re there. And some Democrats aren’t making any bones about the “threat” of a draft:

“Under a second Bush administration, I don’t think we can rule out the fact that the president may try to get Congress to reinstate the draft,” says Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, according to MSNBC.

Political experts say that it would be very unlikely that a draft would get any real political support because politicians know that the voters would hold them responsible during their next re-election bids. Imagine for a moment the sheer horror these Democrats would feel if Republicans suddenly decided to back these measures. Imagine the backlash if the Bush administration announced that this was exactly the thing that needed to happen during such an unpopular war. The fact that the Bush administration hasn’t jumped “on board” with these proposals should tell you something.

But the assumption that the measures won’t go anywhere except into the minds of worried parents isn’t stopping Democrats from using fear as a ploy to attract voters who don’t want to see the draft restarted.

If you’re going to hold Dick Cheney in ill-regard for having tried to play off of voter fears, you must first consider the fact that there are those on the other side of the coin who have no problem doing the same thing. If you’re going to question why the Bush administration would attempt to scare people into voting against Kerry, you have to question why some Democrats don’t seem to have a problem with the same tactic when it happens to benefit their candidate.

After all, why is it not okay to attempt to capitalize on the fears of another terror attack while it is okay to capitalize on the fears of a new draft? Sounds like a double standard to me.

But back to that question on AOL’s poll: which candidate do you think is most likely to reinstate the draft? Many would have you believe that Bush is the only one who offers such a threat. But if the legislation proposed by some of his Democratic brethren is any indication, one cannot rule out the Kerry administration doing so, either. It would seem that if Kerry offered such a suggestion, he would already have some support within his own party!

CBS News has announced that it can no longer vouch for the authenticity of documents that they questioned Bush’s National Guard service. The controversy has united both political parties — briefly, to be sure — in a singleminded condemnation of “the media.”

But those of you who have read this journal for any length of time should know by now that I hate double standards. So I think it’s time to discuss a few of them.

CBS obtained the documents from a former National Guard commander who now admits that he intentionally misled the network about the source of the documents. He told Dan Rather over the weekend that he provided CBS with false information about the document’s source to ease some of the “pressure” being put on him by CBS News staffers who were demanding to know the source of the memos. He claims that he urged the network to authenticate the documents. Why CBS allowed the documents to be aired without the authentication, and why they were willing to trust the source so completely, remains to be explained.

On a personal note, during a good portion of my years in television, I was affiliated with CBS. They are pros. The news division has a solid reputation for a reason. They’re not bad people and not prone to making reckless mistakes. That does not mean, of course, that it can’t happen, as this situation proves. But this incident should not reveal an “overall picture” of operations at CBS News. That would be unfair, and I’d say the same thing if we were talking about ABC News or NBC News.

There is no question that errors were made in this case. My disclaimer out of the way, here are some “Devil’s Advocate” observations about the rampant criticism going on:

Some Republicans insist that Bill Burkett, the retired Texas National Guard officer who handed them the documents, must have a direct connection to the Kerry campaign, since a campaign official discussed “other issues” with Burkett just before the story aired. Yet these same people completely dismiss any connection between the Bush campaign and groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who they say are operating on their own. If we are to believe that the Kerry campaign was directly involved in getting this information on the air, how can we be so quick to dismiss the possibility of a connection between the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Bush campaign?

Some Republicans want to know why CBS had allegedly supplied copies of the memos to the Bush administration and the Kerry campaign before the story aired. If it happened, it was done to get the two sides’ responses to the memos. This is hardly unreasonable in a journalistic sense, since both sides’ response to the documents (assuming they were real) would be newsworthy. Anyone would expect Bush to have a chance to respond to the documents. And anyone would expect Kerry — who has chosen to make military service such a major issue in this campaign — to respond as well. You can’t include such responses in your coverage if you don’t show them what you’re asking them to respond to in advance. That should be common sense.

Some Democrats are fuming because this controversy, they say, is focusing attention away from the “real” issue, which has nothing to do with the economy, the debt, or the War in Iraq; they’re angry because the all-important issue of Bush’s military service is taking the back seat here. Why is Bush’s limited service record so important so many years later? If you remind them (as the White House has) that Bush received an Honorable Discharge, you will likely be met with complaints that an Honorable Discharge means very little…that it is entirely possible to fail to meet your duty and still get one. If this is true, I should think that they would be demanding for a complete overhaul of military procedure. If they are, I haven’t found that call, yet. At the same time, they react angrily when anyone questions Kerry’s record, and insist that it is inappropriate to dispute whether Kerry deserved the awards he got in Vietnam. Apparently, only the Guard’s record keeping is lacking. How convenient.

Some Democrats are calling Bush an opportunist who must have taken advantage of special treatment, whether he asked for it or whether it was given to him based on requests from others, and that he has behaved, therefore, in a dishonorable way. Yet many of them back a politician who is using the tactic of questioning the lack of military service of his competitor — the same tactic he denounced when it was used against his party twelve years earlier — for his own gain. Is this not opportunistic as well? Should we not wonder if this is a case of him behaving dishonorably?

Finally, some Republicans insist that CBS intentionally set out to deceive. They are certain beyond any doubt that there is no way CBS could have made an “honest mistake” here. They believe that the information CBS had should have been subject to much more scrutiny before the story was published, and they believe that no matter how reliable CBS claims it thought the information and the source happened to be when it ran the story, the truth is CBS knew the information was suspect and acted anyway. I understand this line of reasoning from the diehard Republicans least of all because they defend Bush, who acted on intelligence information that has — at least so far — been proven unreliable, by saying he was acting on good faith. If we are to believe that Bush genuinely believed that there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (whether there are or aren’t) and that he was acting only with the best of intentions to protect America, why are we so certain to rule out any possibility of an honest mistake on the part of CBS? Surely no one is going to sit back and say that a journalistic organization should have known better than to act without double-checking the facts, when we consider the price paid in human life on the other side of that coin.

Obviously the story should have been delayed until the documents had been more carefully reviewed. But beyond that simple fact, it would seem that your opinion of CBS News depends on your own political preference. I don’t happen to believe that CBS News intentionally set out to deceive, but that’s my opinion formed from my contact and dealings with them over the years. I think it’s perfectly acceptible to blame them for being too eager to air the story, but not for being a Kerry propaganda machine.