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Aug 16, 2004 The results of a recent public opinion poll revealed that about one-third of respondents felt President Bush has been exagerating terror threats for political purposes. This includes the most recent warnings of financial-oriented targets. This is an interesting perspective, especially when taken in the shadow of criticisms charging that Bush did not do enough to warn or prevent the attacks of September 11, 2001. Other so-called objective polls reflect a significant percentage of people truly believe Bush and his administration lied about Iraq and Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. This view is taken despite the fact that most of the free world, including United Nations members, believed Iraq possessed such weapons. This was the primary purpose of UN Resolution 1441, which required Hussein to destroy all such weapons and furnish sufficient proof of this destruction. Still other surveys reflect the belief that the U.S. economy is in dire straights (the fault of Bush again), even though virtually all relevant economic measures are on the good side of historical norms. The results of these polls are really not very surprising. Public opinion polls very often simply mirror the attitude and tone of the most recent media coverage. The Democrats have gone out of their way to discredit President Bush on every conceivable issue. Authors who write books blasting the Administration are given endless coverage on national talk shows. (Those who write favorable books are barely given a nod by the national media.) Michael Moore produces a ficticious documentary, which is riddled with inconsistencies, misrepresentations and convenient oversights, and the Democrats and media fawn over him and his work. (Military swiftboat commanders, who personally know John Kerry and the kind of person he is, reveal specific examples of why this man is unfit for office and they are written off as partisan kooks, barely receiving a wink from the press. This despite the fact that many of these people are lifelong Democrats.) There is no problem with foisting legitimate criticism on the president, even during wartime, when there is sufficient evidence to back up such criticisms. The trouble is, though, that much of the attacks leveled on Bush have little merit and even less substantiated support. In fact, much of the actual evidence completely defies the positions of Bush's critics. The "9/11 Commission" report concludes that Bush pressured nobody and misrepresented nothing in making the case for the Iraq invasion. Yet, we have John Kerry continuing to spout off how he was misled by Bush prior to his vote in favor of granting presidential authority to go to war, and the willing media eats this up and regurgitates the message on command. (An objective person might think that the Bush-haters are actually rooting against the U.S. in Iraq, just to further discredit our president and his goals.) The discrediting of a sitting president, particularly with limited evidence, comes with a cost to all of us. The enemies we are at war with, who are responsible directly for taking the lives of our soldiers and threatening democracy and future peace in Iraq, are emboldened when they read the false charges levied at our president by our own citizens and media. The terrorists who, in supreme cowardly fashion, kill innocent men, women and children are encouraged as they see their work achieving its objectives. When politics supercedes the objective of winning a war, we have truly crossed over a line into dangerous territory. And, when our sitting president's word has been falsely compromised to the extent we can no longer believe terror warnings issued by his administration, we've set up permanent residence within that danger zone. ------------ About the author: Ed Abraham is a concerned citizen living in flyover country, U.S.A., who happens to be truly disgusted by the loss of common sense in our society and is doing all he can to try to reinstall it. Email: eabra@myway.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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