By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
"The Surge Has Worked."
As slogans go, it lacks the sizzle of "Shock and Awe" or "Mission Accomplished." But it's not bad.
Isn't it interesting, though, to watch John McCain and the Republicans manipulate the message? Now, to have commander-in-chief or even Congressional credentials, one must have been prescient enough to have supported the surge from the start.
No need to rehash that tired old argument about us invading a country in search of weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist. No reason to discuss the failure to anticipate the insurgencies and sectarian violence that led to the death of thousands of U.S. troops and many more Iraqi citizens after President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment.
Now it's all about the surge. If you supported it, congratulations. You are presidential material. If you didn't, you might as well pack up and go home. Clearly you don't have what it takes.
I really hope that, at some point in this campaign season, we get an honest discussion by the candidates about the events and mistakes that led to the debacle that is the Iraq war, and how we can avoid falling into a trap like it in the future.
Nope - I actually told jenni I have come to admire her posts, as I found that she is a lot less dogmatic than I at first had thought.
I saw a Rasmussen poll today on Fox that said 49% of respondents agreed that the media was favoring Obama, while only 14% said the media favorded McCain - and the hilarious irony of that news segment was that just after the dual anchors announced the results, they then said that after the next commercial break, they would show Obama in Israel - lol.
No one doubts any longer that the influential mainstream media is provably (a) overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal (based on public campaign donation records) and (b) actively promoting Obama at the expense of this so-called republic we live in (based on the sheer volume of positive news features vs. McCain). It is a sad indictment of the U.S. media and even though I realize that smart people aren't influenced by this, far more people than you realize either do not understand it or simply refuse to, and they allow their feelings to be shaped by the way the media perceives the world and filters it to them, and I have no idea what can be done about that. Most of those too ignorant simply don't have Internet connections or if they do, they don't actively seek out blogs and alternative news sources - they're too busy with life's more pressing problems to worry about it. Not to mention those who rely on the government 'largesse' (i.e., the redistribution of our tax dollars) in the form of entitlements, who WANT more government because they want MORE entitlements.
Regardless, watching the fawning of the news media over the symbol of Obama rather than the reality has been sickening.