<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1515" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#c0c0c0>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The thing is Linda that those in the military just
don't see Bush the same way you and the NYT does. They hate what Kerry has said
about them since the 1970's and they do not hate Bush. I know you'd like them to
hate Bush but they just don't. Cindy Sheehan does and some military do
but not nearly enough to throw Bush out. I believe this is why Kerry's
joke, botched or not just does not sit well with those fighting people. The NYT
is a failing paper and when they all get home it is going to get worse for them.
Fewer and fewer people believe them no matter what they say...and when they
decide to give up their sources to the feds they may well be in more trouble. I
believe they should be tried for treason...I know you don't but you must
understand that far more do than believe Bush should be impeached!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=lpall@moscow.com href="mailto:lpall@moscow.com">Linda Pall</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, November 03, 2006 1:36
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] Friedman's NYTimes
Op Ed Column re American policy onIraq and who's really insulted</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<DIV class=timestamp>November 3, 2006</DIV>
<DIV class=kicker><NYT_KICKER>Op-Ed Columnist</NYT_KICKER></DIV>
<H1><NYT_HEADLINE type=" " version="1.0">Insulting Our Troops, and Our
Intelligence </NYT_HEADLINE></H1><NYT_BYLINE type=" " version="1.0">
<DIV class=byline>By <A title="More Articles by Thomas L. Friedman"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html?inline=nyt-per">THOMAS
L. FRIEDMAN</A></DIV></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>
<DIV id=articleBody>
<P>George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you’re stupid. Yes, they
do.</P>
<P>They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by
John Kerry — a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush
and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service — and get you to vote
against all Democrats in this election.</P>
<P>Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I
hope you will say to yourself, “They must think I’m stupid.” Because they
surely do.</P>
<P>They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team’s real
and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and
exaggerating Mr. Kerry’s mangled gibe at the president. </P>
<P>What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to the U.S. military
than to send it into combat in Iraq without enough men — to launch an invasion
of a foreign country not by the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, but by
the Rumsfeld Doctrine of just enough troops to lose? What could be a bigger
insult than that?</P>
<P>What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in
uniform than sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so that
some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor and to
retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs in Iraq would
only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could be more injurious
and insulting than Don Rumsfeld’s response to criticism that he sent our
troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the army you’ve
got — get over it. </P>
<P>What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in
uniform than to send them off to war in Iraq without any coherent postwar plan
for political reconstruction there, so that the U.S. military has had to
assume not only security responsibilities for all of Iraq but the political
rebuilding as well? The Bush team has created a veritable library of military
histories — from “Cobra II” to “Fiasco” to “State of Denial” — all of which
contain the same damning conclusion offered by the very soldiers and officers
who fought this war: This administration never had a plan for the morning
after, and we’ve been making it up — and paying the price — ever since. </P>
<P>And what could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and
women in Iraq than to send them off to war and then go out and finance the
very people they’re fighting against with our gluttonous consumption of oil?
Sure, George Bush told us we’re addicted to oil, but he has not done one
single significant thing — demanded higher mileage standards from Detroit,
imposed a gasoline tax or even used the bully pulpit of the White House to
drive conservation — to end that addiction. So we continue to finance the U.S.
military with our tax dollars, while we finance Iran, Syria, Wahhabi mosques
and Al Qaeda madrassas with our energy purchases.</P>
<P>Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette
companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause
cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has
designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the
21st century — to bring out the best in us. His “genius” is taking some
irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us,
so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this
country.</P>
<P>And Karl Rove has succeeded at that in the past because he was sure that he
could sell just enough Bush cigarettes, even though people knew they caused
cancer. Please, please, for our country’s health, prove him wrong this
time.</P>
<P>Let Karl know that you’re not stupid. Let him know that you know that the
most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an
administration that has — through sheer incompetence — brought us to a point
in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable.</P>
<P>Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you know
as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly
incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq — and then get away with it by holding
on to the House and the Senate — it means our country has become a banana
republic. It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered,
so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we
can no longer hold the ruling party to account.</P>
<P>It means we’re as stupid as Karl thinks we are.</P>
<P>I, for one, don’t think we’re that stupid. Next Tuesday we’ll
see.</P></DIV></FONT></DIV>
<P>
<HR>
<P></P>=======================================================<BR> List
services made available by First Step Internet, <BR> serving the
communities of the Palouse since 1994.
<BR>
http://www.fsr.net
<BR>
mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com<BR>=======================================================</BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>