Thursday, December 07, 2006

Iraq Study Group Hogwash


My letter to the editor today......

Dear Editor:

Ironically, on the same day that the Iraq Study Group's (ISG) report was released, ten more Americans died in Iraq. From what I can see, the members of the ISG were people who did not have the wisdom to oppose the war from the beginning. Further, it does not appear that the group was heavily weighted with middle east experts. Who picked these people anyway? Sandra Day O'Connor seems like a nice lady, but what are her qualifications?
Essentially, the ISG has provided cover for Bush to keep troops in Iraq through most of the remainder of his failed administration. That is not the outcome that voters called for in the most recent election. People are tired of having our troops die for nothing.
Americans were tricked into this war by an administration that lied about WMD's. The largest one day protest the world has ever seen should have been a signal that this was a mistake.
A Turkish proverb says, "No matter how far you have gone down the wrong road, turn back." It is way past time to turn back in Iraq.
Our representatives need to use the ISG report as a doorstop and refocus on getting our troops home safely.

Jeffrey W. Eisinger

Monday, December 04, 2006

Even David Gergen is Getting it Now


This guy has historically been tooooo far to the right for my taste. However, even Gergen is starting to come to the light now and actually says the administration is lying to the public about the war......


GERGEN: There was a sense, in the lead-up to the war, in which the press, I think, was guilty of cheerleading. We were waving the flags and it was almost unpatriotic to question the possibility of war with Iraq. And then during the time of the invasion itself, when the reporters were embedded, you know, many of them fell in love with the military and I think they reported very accurately. But there was no question that they were swayed by what they had seen. But since they have been there, I do think the press has been on the cutting edge, been the leading indicator of saying it's not going as well as the administration says. And for those that think that the press is being too harsh, we now have the leak of the Hadley memo this week, which shows, within the administration itself, there's a real difference between what they're telling each other internally and what they're saying publicly.
The internal reporting inside the administration is much grimmer and much more similar to what the press says than what the administration has officially been saying.