From The L. A. Times:
The Songwriters - U2 - 'Where Craft Ends and Spirit Begins'
In a singular process of collaboration, U2 puts mood and emotion first. The words follow.
by Robert Hilburn
August 8, 2004
(New York) "It's one of the most banal couplets I've ever heard," Bono says sheepishly about the words he wrote for one of U2's best-known songs. " 'I want to run, I want to hide...' That's not very interesting, but you know what? People don't hear the couplets when we play the song.
"They hear something else in the music. They hear a band talking about a special place, a better place, and asking if the audience wants to go there with them."
Bono, who writes most of U2's lyrics, is keenly aware that the music's power often comes less from his pen than from the sweeping sonic foundation built by the band.
"Feelings are stronger than ideas or words in a song," he says, pacing the floor of his Central Park West apartment, offering a contrarian view of pop songwriting.
"You can have 1,000 ideas, but unless you capture an emotion, it's an essay. I'm always writing speeches or articles for causes I believe in. That's probably what I would have done if I wasn't in music, but that's not songwriting."
The comments are surprising from a man who devotes so much of his time to ideas -- from the spiritually tinged themes that underlie many U2 songs to his high-profile crusade to get wealthy nations to forgive Third World debt.
"Songwriting comes from a different place," he continues. "Music is the language of the spirit. I think ideas and words are our excuse as songwriters to allow our heart or our spirit to run free. That's when magic happens."
It happens so often for U2 that the group has come closer to matching the quality and mass appeal of the Beatles over the last 25 years than any other band.
This is pop music at its most ambitious -- personal and independent enough to satisfy discerning listeners, yet open and accessible enough to pack stadiums. Though the group has experimented with electronica and other contemporary sounds, the essence of U2 is classic rock 'n' roll.
You won't find lots of humor or party toss-offs in U2. The Irish quartet's flurry of Top 40 hits, including "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "One," mostly are soaring anthems built around the same message of brotherhood that characterized the Beatles' later years. Yet U2 arrives at songs in a much different way.
John Lennon or Paul McCartney usually came up with songs and then taught them to George Harrison and Ringo Starr. But U2 collaborates to a degree that is rare -- a process that depends on the singular chemistry of the four musicians.
Bono and guitarist the Edge bring ideas into the studio -- a title, the trace of a melody or a catchy riff -- then bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen join in the actual construction of the songs. The grueling give and take sometimes stretches for weeks as the musicians toss ideas back and forth, equal partners in the search for an emotion that seems fresh and deeply rooted.
When the marathon sessions are going well, Mullen says, the rehearsal studio feels like a playground. When they're going badly, it feels like a boxing ring.
"We're tough guys," Clayton says. "We know we'll get there eventually. A lot of it is perspiration. You just have to put in the hours and do your time." The Edge is fond of repeating the band's private joke that it's "songwriting by accident."
"It's more like Miles Davis than the Beatles in a way," Bono says as he keeps pacing the hardwood floor of the sun-filled living room, whose minimalist furnishings reflect little of the flash of the typical rock star lifestyle.
Only after the band finds that powerful emotion, be it blissful or melancholy, does he begin applying lyrics. Sometimes he'll draw phrases or lines from the notebook he carries with him, even when he's on holiday or meeting with world leaders such as President Clinton and Pope John Paul II. Occasionally, he'll work from a finished lyric he's brought into the studio.
Mostly, he tries to capture the spontaneous feeling the music inspires in him -- a creative strategy he learned listening to Lennon's first two solo albums, Plastic Ono Band and Imagine.
"He showed that the best way to unlock yourself as a writer was to simply tell the truth," Bono says, settling on the couch, while his wife, Ali, and 13-year-old daughter, Eve, have breakfast nearby. "When you've got a song to write or a blank page, just describe what is on your mind -- not what you'd like to be on your mind. If you feel you have nothing to say, your first line then is 'I have nothing to say.' "
A language all his own
Bono's improvisation in the studio often starts with him just muttering sounds that seem to fit the flow of the music being created -- "Bono-eze," his bandmates call it.
"When Bono starts going through his Bono-eze, it can change what we're playing and take the song in a different direction," Mullen says. "If he's doing something very intense, it might not even be what he's saying, but the way he's behaving, the way he's throwing the microphone around. The energy and intensity helps shape the song."
Gradually, Bono begins changing sounds into words and lines, trying to articulate the feelings the music stirs in him, instinctively drawing upon a storehouse of experiences and beliefs.
Though he didn't go past high school, he's an avid reader and loves spending evenings talking to everyone from poets to politicians. All of this feeds his writing, invariably giving U2's music a level of substance that is rare among bestselling pop acts.
In one of the band's earliest songs, "Rejoice," he outlined his personal goal, which reflects the group's strong Christian spirituality: "I can't change the world, but I can change the world in me."
Unlike many great songwriters, he doesn't spend much time editing his words. He even declares that "craft and taste can be the enemy of songwriting" because they encourage you to follow certain rules, rather than simply following your emotions -- not that he doesn't sometimes wish he had gone back over the lyrics.
Take "Where the Streets Have No Name," the 1987 vision of a world free of religious and racial divide.
The song, from the Grammy-winning The Joshua Tree album, is an adrenaline rush of guitar, bass and drums whose galloping rhythm and graceful images convey the sense of the open road and journey so well that it's no wonder a car manufacturer has offered millions to use it in a commercial.
It begins:
I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name.
When a sheet of paper with the lyrics is handed to him, Bono smiles. He may dismiss that opening couplet, but he can't deny the power unleashed every time the band plays the song.
"We can be in the middle of the worst gig in our lives, but when we go into that song, everything changes," he says. "The audience is on its feet, singing along with every word. It's like God suddenly walks through the room. It's the point where craft ends and spirit begins. How else do you explain it?"
Moving with the music
When a band's body of work includes such elegant songs as "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," "Running to Stand Still" and "With or Without You," you know Bono is drawing an awfully fine line when he says the songwriting craft isn't important.
Believe it, U2 employs plenty of craft. Their strength is that they don't rely on it. One reason veteran songwriters, including such great craftsmen as McCartney, sometimes get into trouble is that they start settling for craft. They'll put a song on an album just because it has a strong melody or a clever line.
U2 holds itself to stricter standards.
That was apparent as the band put final touches on the Pop album on a winter afternoon in 1996. With the deadline just a week away, everything was open to change.
That evening, Bono wanted to tinker with a few words in one song. Sitting in a chair in the control room in Dublin, where the band writes and records most of its songs, he sang the new line as an instrumental track played.
He looked around the room for a reaction. Clayton and Mullen both thought he needed to put more feeling in the vocal, so he tried it again. This time he delivered the lines with such passion that he stood up and moved with the music.
Given Bono's confidence on stage, it was revealing to see how vulnerable he was, waiting for his bandmates' verdict. A bit nervously, he suggested he might need to change a couple of more words. No, no, they said, the words and vocal were fine. He looked relieved.
In the months of making an album, the other musicians are frequently challenged the same way Bono was during that session. They thrive on their collective, organic way of building songs.
"At various times, we've tried to stick to conventional songwriting," says Mullen from Dublin. "But after a few months we see it's not working. We need to dismantle the ideas and start again."
Adds the Edge: "My worst nightmare is sounding 'professional.' I think we work best when we keep moving into the unknown."
Working by instinct
U2's unorthodox songwriting style was born out of necessity.
When the band members came together in high school, they weren't good enough at their instruments to play convincing versions of the hits of the day. To hide their inexperience, they came up with their own songs.
"From fairly early on, it became clear to us that we had no idea about songwriting technique," the Edge says. "Our way into songwriting was to dream it up. We'd try to imagine how others might do the song, the Clash or Lennon or the Jam. Instinct was everything for us, and it really still is."
Along with Bono's absorbing vocals, the Edge's guitar lines became the band's first distinctive feature.
"I like a nice ringing sound on guitar, and on most of my chords I find two strings and make them ring the same note, so it's almost like a 12-string sound," he said years ago. "So for E, I might play a B, E, E and B."
Because he didn't like the sound of the low strings on his Gibson Explorer guitar, Edge concentrated on the upper strings, giving the music engaging trebly overtones. It was the bright, clarion cry of his guitar that injected a rich, irresistible quality in "I Will Follow," the centerpiece of the group's debut album, 1980's Boy.
The lyrics of the song, with their "I was lost, but I am found" imagery, are commonplace on the printed page, but they soar in the energy and youthful optimism of the track.
The band members didn't even think of themselves as songwriters until the third album, 1983's War.
Before starting that project, Edge, the group's most accomplished musician, spent three weeks trying to put together some musical ideas so they wouldn't be starting strictly from scratch in the rehearsal hall. Two of the ideas led to "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Year's Day," songs that lifted the band to new creative heights.
"My job is to find an image that sort of evokes the music," Bono says, "and it was easy with 'New Year's Day.' The piano notes on the song were icy, and Adam's bass line told you it's outdoors, not indoors."
As he stood in the studio on the day in 1982 that U2 was finalizing "New Year's Day," Bono had a mental picture of Lech Walesa, the Polish Solidarity leader, standing in the snow on New Year's Day, leading a workers strike. It resonated with him.
The band members had gone through some problems, and they weren't sure they wanted to continue together. Their spiritual values seemed at odds with the rock lifestyle, but they finally realized they could use the music to share their beliefs. So it felt like the band too was beginning again.
Against a gentle musical backdrop, Bono pieced together a message about starting over and solidarity, a message of innocence and hope.
With "Sunday Bloody Sunday," the other key song on the War album, the idea for the song as well as the title and basic chords came from the Edge. The melody and a sort of militaristic, Clash-like frame were added in the studio.
"The idea was to contrast Bloody Sunday, where 13 peaceful Irish protesters were killed by British paratroopers, with an Easter Sunday," Bono says. "I had started to discover the principle of nonviolence at the time, and there's also a piece of that in there."
The song's opening lines:
I can't believe the news today
I can't close my eyes and make it go away
How long, how long must we sing this song?
By the time War was released, U2 was being widely hailed as the best young rock band in years. Yet their songwriting was still in question. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Year's Day" were good starts. But where was their "Let It Be"?
They found it the next year.
Blues and prayers
A salute to the nonviolence doctrine of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., "Pride (In the Name of Love)" was the group's first Top 40 U.S. single. In it, the craft and spirit came together.
U2 was working by then with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who encouraged the band to adopt even grander, more atmospheric musical textures.
In "Pride," the music felt as majestic as cathedral bells as Bono sang these lines:
Early morning, April 4
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
The band's masterpiece -- and the first pure rock album to win a best album Grammy since the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band -- was just months away.
U2 had become fascinated with America on the tours that preceded The Joshua Tree album.
Where early musical influences included Bob Marley, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen and a lot of punk and post-punk outfits, from the Clash and Sex Pistols to Television and Patti Smith, the time in the U.S. led them to explore the rootsy blues and country sounds that had contributed so much to the birth of rock.
Bono read his way through tours, devouring the works of such American novelists, playwrights and poets as Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, Charles Bukowski, Sam Shepard and Allen Ginsberg, among hundreds. It all helped him become more intimate and immediate as a writer. And the Scriptures were, as they'd been from the beginning, a constant source of inspiration.
The fruits of the band's exploration came together in The Joshua Tree, whose "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" picked up a Grammy nomination for record of the year.
Like "Where the Streets Have No Name," "Looking For" was epic rock, built around Edge's exhilarating guitar and the march-like feel of Mullen's drumming and the seductive push of Clayton's bass notes. In movie terms, it was in every way a widescreen, Technicolor affair.
Bono's lyrics outlined the tale of search for satisfaction and salvation:
I have run I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
"I was always interested in the character of David in the Bible because he was such a screw-up. It's a great amusement to me that the people God chose to use in the Scriptures were all liars, cheaters, adulterers, murderers," Bono says. "I don't know which of the activities I was involved in at the time, but I certainly related to David," he adds with a laugh. "I was writing my psalm."
What intrigued him was what he felt was a link between the Psalms and the blues, which he had just discovered.
"In the Psalms, David questions God, 'Where are you when I need you?' Blues has this sort of honesty that gospel music doesn't have. Gospel music is the stuff of faith. It tells you about where you are going. The blues tells you where you are. God is much more interested in the blues because you get that honesty."
The album sold 20 million copies around the world.
Rather than repeat the anthem-ish nature of The Joshua Tree and 1988's Rattle and Hum, U2 went in the early '90s to Berlin, where they spent agonizing months updating their sound with darker, more electronic elements.
"We were really at a low ebb," the Edge recalls. "Everyone was in grumpy humor. People were harboring serious misgivings about what was going down, and the mood was getting more and more negative."
Yet the process yielded another landmark album, Achtung Baby, that signaled a new direction, one in which the lyrics and music took on edgier and less predictable dimensions.
Bono says he felt his vocabulary as a singer had been limited because only certain words and tones worked with his tenor vocals. But in Berlin, he learned he could expand his expressive range by lowering his voice through the use of such devices as distortion pedals.
"It gives you new language," he says, joking about how Tom Waits can go so many places in his songs with his growly voice. "The tone of your voice dictates the lyrics. Who'd know that?"
The album delivered a signature U2 song, the ballad "One," whose history dramatizes to him the gap between what's expressed in words and what is conveyed through the music. Though Bono thinks of it as a bitter statement, the music is so healing, audiences find it comforting.
"It amazes me when people tell me they played it at their wedding or for comfort at a funeral," Bono says. "I go to myself, 'Are you crazy? It's about breaking up.' "
While he sometimes wishes the band's songwriting process gave him more time to write the lyrics, he still thinks the system comes up with the best songs.
"When I look at our first 10 years, I just hear unfinished work, lyrics we never finished because we ran out of studio time," he says of his contributions. "I hear 'Bad,' and see what's not there. I just see a list of failures."
Still, he wouldn't change anything about the way U2 works. For all his personal frustrations and the band's uncertain moments, they all know they've found a way to connect with audiences.
Eno, one of pop's most sophisticated observers, is struck by the group's commitment to one another and the music.
"They really are a group, the only real group I've ever met," he once said. "They realize that intuitively, and there is a great loyalty, perhaps because they realize that none of them would have been a musician without the others...I can't imagine what kind of bands they would have ended up in."
The rule on rules
Bono and his family live most of the year in Dublin, but he enjoys the energy of New York.
Even though he's been visiting the city for two decades, he still takes delight in pointing out some of the landmarks as he sits in the passenger seat of a van headed to a meeting on easing world hunger. As the driver navigates through traffic, Bono shoves the new U2 album into the CD player and pounds his fist on the dashboard as the music blasts through the speakers. There's a driving, rock 'n' roll vitality to the music, which is due this fall; a freshness that you hardly expect from bands in their third decade.
But U2 has been able to remain both current and relevant. They get airplay on college and alt-rock radio stations and find their "Beautiful Day" at John Kerry campaign rallies.
As the vocal starts, he sings along. But it's so noisy in the car you can't really make out the words. Bono's expression, however, tells you he's very proud of this album. He suddenly stops singing and begins chuckling as he turns down the volume. "Did you hear that last verse?...You never write a verse like that. That was definitely improvised. But there are other lines in the song I wrote ahead of time."
When the songs are finished, Bono looks at the disc.
"Lou Reed is a friend and I once asked if he had advice for a young poet, and, in his usual cryptic way, he summed it up, 'Break rhyme occasionally.' "
Bono laughs as the van pulls to a stop.
"You know, songwriting really is a mysterious process...because we're asking people to expose themselves. It's like open heart surgery in some way. You're looking for real, raw emotions, and you don't find that by sticking to the rules."
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Five songs for the ages
While the epic nature of U2's musical landscape is what first catches the ear, it's also the compelling themes that make the songs stick with us.
1."Where the Streets Have No Name"/"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" 1987. It's a bit of a cheat to list two songs, but the tunes from The Joshua Tree have always seemed to be closely connected expressions of spiritual search.
2."One" 1991. Rock is often best when it is rowdy and irreverent, but the heart of U2's music is its gracefulness. Even in moments as melancholy as this, there is an overriding touch of eloquence. Key lines: "You ask me to enter/ But then you make me crawl/ And I can't be holding on/ To what you got/ When all you got is hurt."
3."Bad" 1984. Its themes may be dark, but U2 refuses to surrender to pessimism or despair. That's why this sober tale about heroin addiction also serves as a warm rallying cry.
4."Running to Stand Still" 1987. Not only do the words capture the way drugs can disorient people so that they feel they are running while remaining motionless, but the stark, funereal tone of the music is a perfect match.
5."Peace on Earth" 2000. This may be the darkest Christmas song ever written. After a terrorist bombing in Northern Ireland, Bono expressed the heartache and rage of a parent who can't be comforted by more promises of hope. "Sick of sorrow/ Sick of pain/ Sick of hearing again and again/ That there's going to be/ Peace on Earth."
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Five albums for the library
These albums, all released by Island, offer an absorbing chronicle of U2's artistry and growth.
1. Boy 1980. This album feels very much like the start of a journey, which it was for young men just out of their teens. The tunes capture marvelously the optimism and uncertainties one feels at that age. Highlight: "I Will Follow."
2. The Unforgettable Fire 1984. The War album in 1983 signaled the maturation of U2 as artists, but this CD was the real creative breakthrough. Highlight: "Bad."
3. The Joshua Tree 1987. The band's first masterpiece, a work of profound elegance and mystery and faith. Highlight: "Where the Streets Have No Name"/"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."
4. Rattle and Hum 1988. This will likely be a controversial choice because even some U2 fans thought the band's ego got in the way in this companion piece to the band's concert movie. But the mix of U2's imagination and the band's celebration of American roots music in this two-disc package is gloriously personal and daring. Highlight: "Love Rescue Me," which was co-written by Bob Dylan.
5. Achtung Baby 1991. The band changes gears in every way but one: The music still feels heartfelt and compelling, yet also more risk-taking and edgy. Highlight: "One."
© Los Angeles Times, 2004.
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Friday, August 20, 2004
For Bugel, There's Always a Fine Line
From Hogs to Dirtbags, He Puts Stamp on Offense
By Nunyo Demasio
Washington Post Staff Writer
Joe Bugel huddled with 10 offensive linemen in a meeting room at Redskins Park following the Washington Redskins' first minicamp in March. The assistant head coach for offense turned off the lights, then showed highlights of the Hogs, the famed offensive line Bugel guided under Coach Joe Gibbs in Washington from 1981 to 1989.
Images flickered of linemen who began their NFL careers as obscure rookies, including Mark Schlereth, a 10th-round selection, and Raleigh McKenzie, an 11th-round pick. Jeff Bostic, one of the original Hogs, had been a long snapper before transforming into a top-flight center.
"This is how we're going to do things here," Bugel told his new players, ranging from two-time Pro Bowl selection Chris Samuels to rookie Jim Molinaro, a sixth-round pick. "A picture is worth a thousand words. Everybody I'm going to show you on tape has a Redskins helmet on. They're your older brothers.
"No matter where you're drafted, or even if you're not drafted, if you do those things, you'll always be a Redskin."
Then, before Bugel put away the tapes, the 64-year-old offensive coach fast forwarded to the present by concocting a nickname for his new crew: the Dirtbags, derived from seeing a muddied, scruffy Jon Jansen in the first week of practice.
Jansen, one of the NFL's best right tackles, suffered a season-ending injury, tearing his right Achilles' tendon in the preseason opener -- a 20-17 victory over the Denver Broncos in Canton, Ohio, on Aug. 9. It was a tremendous loss for Gibbs, whose run-heavy offense behind tailback Clinton Portis relies on the line more than any other unit.
Nonetheless, the Redskins are optimistic they can withstand Jansen's injury largely because of Bugel's reputation for meshing unheralded offensive linemen into formidable units.
Kenyatta Jones, a third-year player who started 11 games for the New England Patriots in 2001, has replaced Jansen in the starting lineup. He'll join left tackle Samuels, guards Derrick Dockery and Randy Thomas, and either Cory Raymer or Lennie Friedman, who are competing for the starting center position, to round out the starting offensive line. For depth, the Redskins added new reserves, including Ray Brown, at 41 one of the league's oldest players who originally played in Washington from 1989 to 1995. Rookies Mark Wilson and Molinaro may be forced into key roles.
After leaving the Redskins in 1990, Bugel struggled as an NFL head coach, going 24-56 over five seasons, four with the Phoenix Cardinals and one with the Oakland Raiders. But he is considered one of the best offensive line coaches in league history and was one of the first people Gibbs lured out of retirement in January when he took the Redskins coaching job.
From 1977 to 1980, before joining Gibbs the first time, Bugel oversaw the Houston Oilers offensive line that tailback Earl Campbell dashed behind en route to the Hall of Fame. With the San Diego Chargers in 2001, Bugel coached an offensive line composed of players earning the league minimum. The makeshift unit created enough holes for tailback LaDainian Tomlinson to gain 1,236 rushing yards, the second-highest total in franchise history.
Bugel's current and former players believe his success stems from masterful motivational skills, communication ability and teaching acumen. Returning Redskins say they have markedly improved through Bugel's emphasis on hand techniques to hinder defenders.
Last season, Thomas, a gifted athlete who is agile despite his 6-foot-5, 306-pound frame, relied on a flawed blocking method -- blocking wide, with his hands several inches apart. It left Thomas's chest open to defenders, making him more vulnerable. A lineman has more control over the defender by keeping his hands close together inside the chest area -- "tight hands," Bugel explained -- before punching out.
The Redskins also have incorporated one of Bugel's trademark techniques: the arm pump, which is used in run blocking. The lineman cocks, or pumps, his arms to his sides before forcefully pushing upward -- "like a fork lift," Bugel said -- into the defender's chest area. It diminishes the chances of holding and keeps the lineman from being passive.
"He wants us to hit 'em in the chest and make their heartbeat stop," Thomas said. "It stuns them at the line because the defense is taught to hit you in your chest, so it's better if you hit them first."
Bugel used imaginary handcuffs, teaching his players through repetition and constant reminders. Thomas, a sixth-year veteran, had previously known a similar technique but stopped using it last season because it wasn't emphasized. Samuels, who is coming off perhaps his worst NFL season, picked up damaging tendencies in recent years -- dropping his head and using his hands improperly.
"I developed some bad habits the past couple of years," said Samuels, a five-year veteran who was still named a third alternate to the 2004 Pro Bowl. "With Joe Bugel coming back, it's definitely going to help us out. He's helped my game out tremendously already."
The Mount Rushmore of NFL offensive line coaches includes Bugel, Alex Gibbs and Jim Hanifan. Bugel differentiates himself from others with a colorful personality and an exceptional ability to inspire -- infusing confidence in the least talented players while prodding star players to reach their abilities. Bugel makes learning, especially in the classroom, enjoyable because of his entertainer's flair, former and current players said.
"He's a combination of Tony Soprano and Shakespeare," said Raymer, back in Washington after playing with the Redskins from 1995 to 2001. "He's a philosopher, but how do I say it? He's an unsophisticated man's philosopher. He came up with the word, 'Dirtbags.' You leave that up to him. He's one of a kind."
It only took Washington's first minicamp for players to realize Bugel's unique touch. During a drill for offensive linemen, Bugel, with a scowl, screamed in Thomas's ear, "You can be replaced!"
Bugel seemed to overlook that Thomas signed a seven-year, $27.6 million contract in 2003; the $7 million signing bonus remains the richest in NFL history for a right guard.
How did Thomas take Bugel's remark? "I've got to go out and get better," Thomas said, chuckling. "You've got to be criticized. You can't be comfortable. I don't think guys are comfortable because [Bugel] can plug anybody in there."
After being hired as offensive line coach by Gibbs in 1981, Bugel plugged in three rookies as starters: Mark May (20th-overall pick), Russ Grimm (third-round pick) and Joe Jacoby, who signed as an undrafted rookie. The other lineman, Bostic, was a free agent who had been a long snapper for the Philadelphia Eagles the previous season. George Starke was the veteran of the group.
Under Bugel's tutelage, Bostic turned into one of the league's top centers. Bostic, Grimm, Jacoby and May reached the Pro Bowl a total of nine times. Bugel named them the Hogs during the 1982 training camp because of their girth. (Bostic, Jacoby, Grimm, May and Starke averaged 280 pounds and 6 feet 5, making them the bulkiest unit in the NFL at the time.) In turn, the players dubbed Bugel Boss Hog.
"I'm not saying that those guys didn't have abilities," said Redskins tight ends coach Rennie Simmons, who was on Gibbs's staff from 1981 to 1992, with Bugel the first nine years. "Obviously, they had to have ability, but it took somebody to get it out of them. And I think Buges has a way of doing that."
Bugel calls Jansen's injury the biggest blow that he has encountered as an offensive line coach; the right tackle would have protected southpaw quarterback Mark Brunell's blind side, and his run-blocking prowess fit well with Portis. Since Jansen's injury occurred several weeks before the regular season, however, it will at least give Bugel time to find a replacement.
"If this was year two, I would worry more about missing Jon Jansen," May said this week. "But now they're still finding themselves. Bugel will eventually get a handful of guys that are interchangeable."
Bugel recalls 1984, when Bostic severely injured his right knee and missed the second half of the season. The Redskins still finished 11-5 as Washington rushed for 2,274 yards, 1,236 of them by John Riggins. In 1989, the club allowed only 21 sacks despite season-ending injuries to Jacoby and May and Grimm's recurring knee ailments. The Redskins, behind Gerald Riggs and Ernest Byner, rushed for 1,904 yards.
"Somebody has always gone down," said Rick "Doc" Walker, who played tight end in Washington from 1980 to 1985. "We've always had a loss on the offensive line."
Bugel's presence on the Redskins is so influential that he heavily influenced Washington's thinking during the 2004 draft. Despite the need for a pass rusher on the defensive lines, the Redskins selected offensive linemen Molinaro and Wilson in the lower rounds instead. "I guess I go back to the days when you pick a Jacoby and give him to Buges," Gibbs said, "and you wind up with a Pro Bowler. You have flashbacks there."
The rookies are no different than the veterans when it comes to Bugel's unusual brand of instruction. It's not uncommon for an NFL player to doze off during a two-hour meeting. When Bugel senses that a player is becoming inattentive, he sometimes responds by screaming or cursing loudly.
"You're probably jumping three or four feet out your seat," Raymer said, "because he just scared the hell out of you. He's been around and knows all the tricks."
And after a great play, Bugel has a habit of yelling: "Thaaaat's football!"
Dockery, a second-year player, said: "He's a character. He makes you laugh when you're around him. You enjoy coming to work because he's a great guy. At the same time, he's somebody that's going to push you to become the best person you can be."
Bugel is known for switching from excoriating a player's gaffe to moments later being effusive about a great play. During meetings, Bugel has shown videotape of a poorly executed block several times in slow motion while throwing things around the room in outrage. Conversely, Bugel dissects good plays and heaps praise on the relevant players.
"He's one of those guys who kicks you in the butt, and hugs you one play after another," recalled Walker, now a local radio personality, echoing current players.
But Bugel's split coaching personality isn't contrived, because players say he adapts to their sensibilities. If Thomas had taken umbrage to Bugel's blunt remarks, the coach said he would have altered his approach.
"You can't treat everybody alike; everybody is different," said Bugel, who makes sure to familiarize himself with his player's relatives. "You've got to find a guy's hot button. Some guys you can kick in the rear end. Some guys you've got to hug and squeeze all the time. When you can master that, then you can put an offensive line together."
Linemen say Bugel also inspires by being active and hands-on. In practice, Bugel often joins his players doing footwork or hitting tackling dummies. When the unit has weightlifting sessions, it's no surprise for Bugel to be there too, pumping iron. Trudging off the field after practices, Bugel is a familiar sight, sweat dripping down his face to his white T-shirt, burgundy mesh shorts and burgundy-on-white sneakers.
"If you've got a big heavy coach telling you you're not in shape," Bugel said, "you're going to look at him like, 'I'm out of shape? Look at you coach. Look in the mirror. Your belly is doubled-up over your pants.' So as a coach you try to be in condition."
Time seems to have frozen for Bugel since his previous Redskins tenure. A swath of Bugel's hair is blonde. But Bugel didn't take a page out of the style book of Dallas Cowboys Coach Bill Parcells, who dyed his hair blond after returning to the NFL in 2003 following a hiatus. "Lacquer but no dye," insisted Bugel, who explained that his hair turns blonde naturally from the sun.
Bugel first left the Redskins in 1990 to become head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, beating out Bill Belichick, then the New York Giants' defensive coordinator, and Mike Holmgren, then the 49ers' offensive coordinator, for the job. From 1990 to 1993, Bugel went 20-44 with the Cardinals. He became an Oakland Raiders assistant for three seasons before being promoted to head coach in 1997. But Bugel was dismissed after one season and a 4-12 record.
"The best years I've ever had in coaching was with the Washington Redskins and Joe Gibbs," said Bugel, who initially retired from coaching after being with San Diego from 1998 to 2001. "I learned a tremendous amount of football from Joe. We had great assistant coaches. When I left here I was naive. I thought every program was run like this organization, but to find out it's not.
"There have been some rocky roads out there, then I made that U-turn when Joe called and said we're going back home. So I'm going to finish on a great note coming back to Washington."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
From Hogs to Dirtbags, He Puts Stamp on Offense
By Nunyo Demasio
Washington Post Staff Writer
Joe Bugel huddled with 10 offensive linemen in a meeting room at Redskins Park following the Washington Redskins' first minicamp in March. The assistant head coach for offense turned off the lights, then showed highlights of the Hogs, the famed offensive line Bugel guided under Coach Joe Gibbs in Washington from 1981 to 1989.
Images flickered of linemen who began their NFL careers as obscure rookies, including Mark Schlereth, a 10th-round selection, and Raleigh McKenzie, an 11th-round pick. Jeff Bostic, one of the original Hogs, had been a long snapper before transforming into a top-flight center.
"This is how we're going to do things here," Bugel told his new players, ranging from two-time Pro Bowl selection Chris Samuels to rookie Jim Molinaro, a sixth-round pick. "A picture is worth a thousand words. Everybody I'm going to show you on tape has a Redskins helmet on. They're your older brothers.
"No matter where you're drafted, or even if you're not drafted, if you do those things, you'll always be a Redskin."
Then, before Bugel put away the tapes, the 64-year-old offensive coach fast forwarded to the present by concocting a nickname for his new crew: the Dirtbags, derived from seeing a muddied, scruffy Jon Jansen in the first week of practice.
Jansen, one of the NFL's best right tackles, suffered a season-ending injury, tearing his right Achilles' tendon in the preseason opener -- a 20-17 victory over the Denver Broncos in Canton, Ohio, on Aug. 9. It was a tremendous loss for Gibbs, whose run-heavy offense behind tailback Clinton Portis relies on the line more than any other unit.
Nonetheless, the Redskins are optimistic they can withstand Jansen's injury largely because of Bugel's reputation for meshing unheralded offensive linemen into formidable units.
Kenyatta Jones, a third-year player who started 11 games for the New England Patriots in 2001, has replaced Jansen in the starting lineup. He'll join left tackle Samuels, guards Derrick Dockery and Randy Thomas, and either Cory Raymer or Lennie Friedman, who are competing for the starting center position, to round out the starting offensive line. For depth, the Redskins added new reserves, including Ray Brown, at 41 one of the league's oldest players who originally played in Washington from 1989 to 1995. Rookies Mark Wilson and Molinaro may be forced into key roles.
After leaving the Redskins in 1990, Bugel struggled as an NFL head coach, going 24-56 over five seasons, four with the Phoenix Cardinals and one with the Oakland Raiders. But he is considered one of the best offensive line coaches in league history and was one of the first people Gibbs lured out of retirement in January when he took the Redskins coaching job.
From 1977 to 1980, before joining Gibbs the first time, Bugel oversaw the Houston Oilers offensive line that tailback Earl Campbell dashed behind en route to the Hall of Fame. With the San Diego Chargers in 2001, Bugel coached an offensive line composed of players earning the league minimum. The makeshift unit created enough holes for tailback LaDainian Tomlinson to gain 1,236 rushing yards, the second-highest total in franchise history.
Bugel's current and former players believe his success stems from masterful motivational skills, communication ability and teaching acumen. Returning Redskins say they have markedly improved through Bugel's emphasis on hand techniques to hinder defenders.
Last season, Thomas, a gifted athlete who is agile despite his 6-foot-5, 306-pound frame, relied on a flawed blocking method -- blocking wide, with his hands several inches apart. It left Thomas's chest open to defenders, making him more vulnerable. A lineman has more control over the defender by keeping his hands close together inside the chest area -- "tight hands," Bugel explained -- before punching out.
The Redskins also have incorporated one of Bugel's trademark techniques: the arm pump, which is used in run blocking. The lineman cocks, or pumps, his arms to his sides before forcefully pushing upward -- "like a fork lift," Bugel said -- into the defender's chest area. It diminishes the chances of holding and keeps the lineman from being passive.
"He wants us to hit 'em in the chest and make their heartbeat stop," Thomas said. "It stuns them at the line because the defense is taught to hit you in your chest, so it's better if you hit them first."
Bugel used imaginary handcuffs, teaching his players through repetition and constant reminders. Thomas, a sixth-year veteran, had previously known a similar technique but stopped using it last season because it wasn't emphasized. Samuels, who is coming off perhaps his worst NFL season, picked up damaging tendencies in recent years -- dropping his head and using his hands improperly.
"I developed some bad habits the past couple of years," said Samuels, a five-year veteran who was still named a third alternate to the 2004 Pro Bowl. "With Joe Bugel coming back, it's definitely going to help us out. He's helped my game out tremendously already."
The Mount Rushmore of NFL offensive line coaches includes Bugel, Alex Gibbs and Jim Hanifan. Bugel differentiates himself from others with a colorful personality and an exceptional ability to inspire -- infusing confidence in the least talented players while prodding star players to reach their abilities. Bugel makes learning, especially in the classroom, enjoyable because of his entertainer's flair, former and current players said.
"He's a combination of Tony Soprano and Shakespeare," said Raymer, back in Washington after playing with the Redskins from 1995 to 2001. "He's a philosopher, but how do I say it? He's an unsophisticated man's philosopher. He came up with the word, 'Dirtbags.' You leave that up to him. He's one of a kind."
It only took Washington's first minicamp for players to realize Bugel's unique touch. During a drill for offensive linemen, Bugel, with a scowl, screamed in Thomas's ear, "You can be replaced!"
Bugel seemed to overlook that Thomas signed a seven-year, $27.6 million contract in 2003; the $7 million signing bonus remains the richest in NFL history for a right guard.
How did Thomas take Bugel's remark? "I've got to go out and get better," Thomas said, chuckling. "You've got to be criticized. You can't be comfortable. I don't think guys are comfortable because [Bugel] can plug anybody in there."
After being hired as offensive line coach by Gibbs in 1981, Bugel plugged in three rookies as starters: Mark May (20th-overall pick), Russ Grimm (third-round pick) and Joe Jacoby, who signed as an undrafted rookie. The other lineman, Bostic, was a free agent who had been a long snapper for the Philadelphia Eagles the previous season. George Starke was the veteran of the group.
Under Bugel's tutelage, Bostic turned into one of the league's top centers. Bostic, Grimm, Jacoby and May reached the Pro Bowl a total of nine times. Bugel named them the Hogs during the 1982 training camp because of their girth. (Bostic, Jacoby, Grimm, May and Starke averaged 280 pounds and 6 feet 5, making them the bulkiest unit in the NFL at the time.) In turn, the players dubbed Bugel Boss Hog.
"I'm not saying that those guys didn't have abilities," said Redskins tight ends coach Rennie Simmons, who was on Gibbs's staff from 1981 to 1992, with Bugel the first nine years. "Obviously, they had to have ability, but it took somebody to get it out of them. And I think Buges has a way of doing that."
Bugel calls Jansen's injury the biggest blow that he has encountered as an offensive line coach; the right tackle would have protected southpaw quarterback Mark Brunell's blind side, and his run-blocking prowess fit well with Portis. Since Jansen's injury occurred several weeks before the regular season, however, it will at least give Bugel time to find a replacement.
"If this was year two, I would worry more about missing Jon Jansen," May said this week. "But now they're still finding themselves. Bugel will eventually get a handful of guys that are interchangeable."
Bugel recalls 1984, when Bostic severely injured his right knee and missed the second half of the season. The Redskins still finished 11-5 as Washington rushed for 2,274 yards, 1,236 of them by John Riggins. In 1989, the club allowed only 21 sacks despite season-ending injuries to Jacoby and May and Grimm's recurring knee ailments. The Redskins, behind Gerald Riggs and Ernest Byner, rushed for 1,904 yards.
"Somebody has always gone down," said Rick "Doc" Walker, who played tight end in Washington from 1980 to 1985. "We've always had a loss on the offensive line."
Bugel's presence on the Redskins is so influential that he heavily influenced Washington's thinking during the 2004 draft. Despite the need for a pass rusher on the defensive lines, the Redskins selected offensive linemen Molinaro and Wilson in the lower rounds instead. "I guess I go back to the days when you pick a Jacoby and give him to Buges," Gibbs said, "and you wind up with a Pro Bowler. You have flashbacks there."
The rookies are no different than the veterans when it comes to Bugel's unusual brand of instruction. It's not uncommon for an NFL player to doze off during a two-hour meeting. When Bugel senses that a player is becoming inattentive, he sometimes responds by screaming or cursing loudly.
"You're probably jumping three or four feet out your seat," Raymer said, "because he just scared the hell out of you. He's been around and knows all the tricks."
And after a great play, Bugel has a habit of yelling: "Thaaaat's football!"
Dockery, a second-year player, said: "He's a character. He makes you laugh when you're around him. You enjoy coming to work because he's a great guy. At the same time, he's somebody that's going to push you to become the best person you can be."
Bugel is known for switching from excoriating a player's gaffe to moments later being effusive about a great play. During meetings, Bugel has shown videotape of a poorly executed block several times in slow motion while throwing things around the room in outrage. Conversely, Bugel dissects good plays and heaps praise on the relevant players.
"He's one of those guys who kicks you in the butt, and hugs you one play after another," recalled Walker, now a local radio personality, echoing current players.
But Bugel's split coaching personality isn't contrived, because players say he adapts to their sensibilities. If Thomas had taken umbrage to Bugel's blunt remarks, the coach said he would have altered his approach.
"You can't treat everybody alike; everybody is different," said Bugel, who makes sure to familiarize himself with his player's relatives. "You've got to find a guy's hot button. Some guys you can kick in the rear end. Some guys you've got to hug and squeeze all the time. When you can master that, then you can put an offensive line together."
Linemen say Bugel also inspires by being active and hands-on. In practice, Bugel often joins his players doing footwork or hitting tackling dummies. When the unit has weightlifting sessions, it's no surprise for Bugel to be there too, pumping iron. Trudging off the field after practices, Bugel is a familiar sight, sweat dripping down his face to his white T-shirt, burgundy mesh shorts and burgundy-on-white sneakers.
"If you've got a big heavy coach telling you you're not in shape," Bugel said, "you're going to look at him like, 'I'm out of shape? Look at you coach. Look in the mirror. Your belly is doubled-up over your pants.' So as a coach you try to be in condition."
Time seems to have frozen for Bugel since his previous Redskins tenure. A swath of Bugel's hair is blonde. But Bugel didn't take a page out of the style book of Dallas Cowboys Coach Bill Parcells, who dyed his hair blond after returning to the NFL in 2003 following a hiatus. "Lacquer but no dye," insisted Bugel, who explained that his hair turns blonde naturally from the sun.
Bugel first left the Redskins in 1990 to become head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, beating out Bill Belichick, then the New York Giants' defensive coordinator, and Mike Holmgren, then the 49ers' offensive coordinator, for the job. From 1990 to 1993, Bugel went 20-44 with the Cardinals. He became an Oakland Raiders assistant for three seasons before being promoted to head coach in 1997. But Bugel was dismissed after one season and a 4-12 record.
"The best years I've ever had in coaching was with the Washington Redskins and Joe Gibbs," said Bugel, who initially retired from coaching after being with San Diego from 1998 to 2001. "I learned a tremendous amount of football from Joe. We had great assistant coaches. When I left here I was naive. I thought every program was run like this organization, but to find out it's not.
"There have been some rocky roads out there, then I made that U-turn when Joe called and said we're going back home. So I'm going to finish on a great note coming back to Washington."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
From The New York Post:
KERRY CAMP FRETS OVER CAMBODIA TALE
By Deborah Orin
THERE'S now some real angst in Dem ocratic circles be cause of the growing evidence that Democrat John Kerry's claim to have a memory "seared in me" of spending Christmas 1968 in Cambodia was false — and just didn't happen.
But what worries some pro-Kerry Democrats is the fear that Kerry has, as one put it, "an Al Gore problem" — that he's a serial exaggerator. (Remember how Gore claimed to have invented the Internet and inspired the novel "Love Story"?)
Remember Kerry's claim that "I've met foreign leaders" who told him he had to beat Bush? Turned out he hadn't met any foreign leaders in years.
Kerry's campaign Web site claimed credit for Vietnam missions when another man, Tedd Peck, was the skipper (that was removed when he protested) and last week was claiming credit for former Sen. Bob Kerrey's service as Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman.
"John Kerry, Bob Kerrey — similar names," blithely explained Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan, as if Kerry didn't know his own bio.
Not one of Kerry's Swift boat crewmates, even the ones backing his candidacy, recalls being in Cambodia in Christmas 1968 — and anti-Kerry Swift boat veterans cite a host of evidence that he was 50 miles away in Vietnam.
Why does it matter? Because Kerry has said the Cambodia incident — of being sent on a covert mission to "a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops" was "seared" in his mind and changed his view of America.
Team Kerry's excuse is that maybe he accidentally crossed the border or his time frame was fuzzy, but that just won't square with his passionate 1986 claim, on the Senate floor, that the Christmas memory was "seared — seared — in me."
Unlike the conflicts over Kerry's medals, this isn't a he said/he said dispute — Kerry either was or wasn't in Cambodia. Eventually a reporter will ask him point-blank if he still claims he was in Cambodia that Christmas — yes or no.
For sure, as the anti-Kerry Swift vets pointed out — thus embarrassing every reporter who missed it for over a decade — Kerry's statements were clearly false, since Nixon wasn't yet president in Christmas 1968. But adding Nixon sure embellishes the tale.
The story has unraveled so badly that Kerry's court biographer, Douglas Brinkley, is said to be preparing a new account in which Cambodia is said to come post-Christmas. So why did Brinkley leave it out of his campaign bio?
The other fascinating part of this story is the key role that bloggers on the Internet have played in pointing out the holes in Kerry's story — even as much of the press tries to ignore them.
For instance, when Team Kerry held a press conference featuring his crewmates this week, one was conspicuously missing — David Alston — after the Internet-fueled revelation that he may have only served on Kerry's boat for one week.
A Web blogger, captainsquartersblog, began questioning whether Alston (who has spoken emotionally about how they "bled together") ever served with Kerry. National Review examined the records and concluded maybe — for just one week.
This whole story could be a test of the Internet's impact in this campaign. While most papers have been ignoring the story — until Kerry went ballistic at the Swift vets yesterday — bloggers have been examining it in detail.
On Web sites like Instapundit.com, captainsquartersblog.com, hugh- hewitt.com and rogerlsimon.com, skeptical veterans are trading details on Kerry's service and raising intricate questions about his veracity based on their own experience.
Their online dialogue is punctuated with questions about why the "mainstream media" have been mostly ignoring this story — and why the 13 pro-Kerry vets are automatically assumed to have more credibility than 264 anti-Kerry vets.
Just imagine the coverage if 264 vets who served with Bush in the Texas Air National Guard made similar charges. For those bloggers, this story has become a test of the mainstream media's credibility — and its liberal anti-Bush bias.
Deborah Orin is The Post's Washington bureau chief.
KERRY CAMP FRETS OVER CAMBODIA TALE
By Deborah Orin
THERE'S now some real angst in Dem ocratic circles be cause of the growing evidence that Democrat John Kerry's claim to have a memory "seared in me" of spending Christmas 1968 in Cambodia was false — and just didn't happen.
But what worries some pro-Kerry Democrats is the fear that Kerry has, as one put it, "an Al Gore problem" — that he's a serial exaggerator. (Remember how Gore claimed to have invented the Internet and inspired the novel "Love Story"?)
Remember Kerry's claim that "I've met foreign leaders" who told him he had to beat Bush? Turned out he hadn't met any foreign leaders in years.
Kerry's campaign Web site claimed credit for Vietnam missions when another man, Tedd Peck, was the skipper (that was removed when he protested) and last week was claiming credit for former Sen. Bob Kerrey's service as Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman.
"John Kerry, Bob Kerrey — similar names," blithely explained Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan, as if Kerry didn't know his own bio.
Not one of Kerry's Swift boat crewmates, even the ones backing his candidacy, recalls being in Cambodia in Christmas 1968 — and anti-Kerry Swift boat veterans cite a host of evidence that he was 50 miles away in Vietnam.
Why does it matter? Because Kerry has said the Cambodia incident — of being sent on a covert mission to "a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops" was "seared" in his mind and changed his view of America.
Team Kerry's excuse is that maybe he accidentally crossed the border or his time frame was fuzzy, but that just won't square with his passionate 1986 claim, on the Senate floor, that the Christmas memory was "seared — seared — in me."
Unlike the conflicts over Kerry's medals, this isn't a he said/he said dispute — Kerry either was or wasn't in Cambodia. Eventually a reporter will ask him point-blank if he still claims he was in Cambodia that Christmas — yes or no.
For sure, as the anti-Kerry Swift vets pointed out — thus embarrassing every reporter who missed it for over a decade — Kerry's statements were clearly false, since Nixon wasn't yet president in Christmas 1968. But adding Nixon sure embellishes the tale.
The story has unraveled so badly that Kerry's court biographer, Douglas Brinkley, is said to be preparing a new account in which Cambodia is said to come post-Christmas. So why did Brinkley leave it out of his campaign bio?
The other fascinating part of this story is the key role that bloggers on the Internet have played in pointing out the holes in Kerry's story — even as much of the press tries to ignore them.
For instance, when Team Kerry held a press conference featuring his crewmates this week, one was conspicuously missing — David Alston — after the Internet-fueled revelation that he may have only served on Kerry's boat for one week.
A Web blogger, captainsquartersblog, began questioning whether Alston (who has spoken emotionally about how they "bled together") ever served with Kerry. National Review examined the records and concluded maybe — for just one week.
This whole story could be a test of the Internet's impact in this campaign. While most papers have been ignoring the story — until Kerry went ballistic at the Swift vets yesterday — bloggers have been examining it in detail.
On Web sites like Instapundit.com, captainsquartersblog.com, hugh- hewitt.com and rogerlsimon.com, skeptical veterans are trading details on Kerry's service and raising intricate questions about his veracity based on their own experience.
Their online dialogue is punctuated with questions about why the "mainstream media" have been mostly ignoring this story — and why the 13 pro-Kerry vets are automatically assumed to have more credibility than 264 anti-Kerry vets.
Just imagine the coverage if 264 vets who served with Bush in the Texas Air National Guard made similar charges. For those bloggers, this story has become a test of the mainstream media's credibility — and its liberal anti-Bush bias.
Deborah Orin is The Post's Washington bureau chief.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Naming the Enemy
by Daniel Pipes
In a striking admission, George W. Bush said the other day: "We actually misnamed the war on terror. It ought to be [called] the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world."
This important concession follows growing criticism of the misleading term "war on terror" (how can one fight a tactic?) and replaces it with the more accurate "war on ideological extremists." With this change, the battle of ideas can begin.
But who exactly are those ideological extremists? The next step is for Mr. Bush to give them a name.
In fact, he on occasion since September 11 has spoken candidly about their identity. As early as September 2001, he referred to the enemy being "a fringe form of Islamic extremism" which seeks "to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans, and make no distinction among military and civilians, including women and children." This Islamic extremism also is heir to "all the murderous ideologies of the twentieth century," including "fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism."
In January 2002, Mr. Bush was more specific yet, adding that the terrorist underworld includes "groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, [and] Jaish-i-Mohammed." In May 2002, he pointed out that a "new totalitarian threat" exists whose adherents "are defined by their hatreds: they hate … Jews and Christians and all Muslims who disagree with them" (implying that they are Muslims). Those adherents, he noted, feel entitled to kill "in the name of a false religious purity."
A year later, in May 2003, the president provided details about the Islamists' goals, observing that "nineteen evil men—the shock troops of a hateful ideology—gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of [Ramzi Binalshibh, the Al-Qaeda leader accused of directing the 9/11 operation], that September the 11th would be the ‘beginning of the end of America.'"
The terrorist acts of the past two decades, Mr. Bush noted in April 2004, are the work of fanatical, political ideologues who "seek tyranny in the Middle East and beyond. They seek to oppress and persecute women. They seek the death of Jews and Christians, and every Muslim who desires peace over theocratic terror."
Last month, Bush for the first time used the phrase "Islamic militants," perhaps his most explicit reference until now to the Islamist threat, saying that until he closed a so-called Islamic charity based in Illinois, the Benevolence International Foundation, it "channel[ed] money to Islamic militants."
Rolling these comments into a single summary statement establishes how Mr. Bush – and by extension the whole of the U.S. government – sees the enemy: A false doctrine of Islamic purity inspires a totalitarian ideology of power and domination. In its ruthlessness, murderousness, and global ambition, it resembles the Nazi and communist ideologies. The extremists who advocate this doctrine see America as the chief obstacle to achieving their goals. To defeat America, they initially seek Washington's retreat from the outside world. Ultimately, they hope to bring about a collapse of America as it now exists. Toward this end, they are prepared to murder any number of Americans.
This is a fine description of Islamism, its mentality, methods, and means. It also shows that Mr. Bush draws the subtle distinction between the personal faith of Islam and the political ideology of Islamism (or militant Islam).
In this, he parallels what a number of Muslim leaders – including even some Saudis – have said. Following acts of terrorism in Riyadh in May 2003, Interior Minister Prince Naif publicly attributed this violence to "ideology" and "fanatical ideas." And if Naif – himself an Islamist – attributes the problem ultimately not to acts of violence but the ideas behind them, surely Americans can say no less.
Mr. Bush has already alluded to America having to confront its third totalitarian ideology. Now he should name that ideology. I hope he will surround himself with a group of distinguished anti-Islamist Muslims, foreign and domestic alike, and formally announce America's acceptance of leadership in the war against Islamism.
Only with such specificity can the civilized world start on the path to victory over this latest manifestation of barbarism.
From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/2021
by Daniel Pipes
In a striking admission, George W. Bush said the other day: "We actually misnamed the war on terror. It ought to be [called] the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world."
This important concession follows growing criticism of the misleading term "war on terror" (how can one fight a tactic?) and replaces it with the more accurate "war on ideological extremists." With this change, the battle of ideas can begin.
But who exactly are those ideological extremists? The next step is for Mr. Bush to give them a name.
In fact, he on occasion since September 11 has spoken candidly about their identity. As early as September 2001, he referred to the enemy being "a fringe form of Islamic extremism" which seeks "to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans, and make no distinction among military and civilians, including women and children." This Islamic extremism also is heir to "all the murderous ideologies of the twentieth century," including "fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism."
In January 2002, Mr. Bush was more specific yet, adding that the terrorist underworld includes "groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, [and] Jaish-i-Mohammed." In May 2002, he pointed out that a "new totalitarian threat" exists whose adherents "are defined by their hatreds: they hate … Jews and Christians and all Muslims who disagree with them" (implying that they are Muslims). Those adherents, he noted, feel entitled to kill "in the name of a false religious purity."
A year later, in May 2003, the president provided details about the Islamists' goals, observing that "nineteen evil men—the shock troops of a hateful ideology—gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of [Ramzi Binalshibh, the Al-Qaeda leader accused of directing the 9/11 operation], that September the 11th would be the ‘beginning of the end of America.'"
The terrorist acts of the past two decades, Mr. Bush noted in April 2004, are the work of fanatical, political ideologues who "seek tyranny in the Middle East and beyond. They seek to oppress and persecute women. They seek the death of Jews and Christians, and every Muslim who desires peace over theocratic terror."
Last month, Bush for the first time used the phrase "Islamic militants," perhaps his most explicit reference until now to the Islamist threat, saying that until he closed a so-called Islamic charity based in Illinois, the Benevolence International Foundation, it "channel[ed] money to Islamic militants."
Rolling these comments into a single summary statement establishes how Mr. Bush – and by extension the whole of the U.S. government – sees the enemy: A false doctrine of Islamic purity inspires a totalitarian ideology of power and domination. In its ruthlessness, murderousness, and global ambition, it resembles the Nazi and communist ideologies. The extremists who advocate this doctrine see America as the chief obstacle to achieving their goals. To defeat America, they initially seek Washington's retreat from the outside world. Ultimately, they hope to bring about a collapse of America as it now exists. Toward this end, they are prepared to murder any number of Americans.
This is a fine description of Islamism, its mentality, methods, and means. It also shows that Mr. Bush draws the subtle distinction between the personal faith of Islam and the political ideology of Islamism (or militant Islam).
In this, he parallels what a number of Muslim leaders – including even some Saudis – have said. Following acts of terrorism in Riyadh in May 2003, Interior Minister Prince Naif publicly attributed this violence to "ideology" and "fanatical ideas." And if Naif – himself an Islamist – attributes the problem ultimately not to acts of violence but the ideas behind them, surely Americans can say no less.
Mr. Bush has already alluded to America having to confront its third totalitarian ideology. Now he should name that ideology. I hope he will surround himself with a group of distinguished anti-Islamist Muslims, foreign and domestic alike, and formally announce America's acceptance of leadership in the war against Islamism.
Only with such specificity can the civilized world start on the path to victory over this latest manifestation of barbarism.
From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/2021
Brian Wilson Smiles
Legendary Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson has put his Smile in order. The long awaited album has finally be pieced together for the first time with a tracklist order.
Wilson recently performed the 35 year old lost materpiece for English audiences and has since re-recorded the never released Beach Boys album for release in September.
Smile was to have been the follow-up to the classic 'Pet Sounds' album of 1966 but it was scrapped before release. Wilson told Undercover just prior to his Australian tour in 2002 that 'Smile' was inspired by The Beatles 'Sgt Pepper' which was inspired by his own 'Pet Sounds' album which was inspired by their 'Rubber Soul'. "I was listening to Rubber Soul one night and I could not believe my ears" he told Undercover News in 2002. "I loved those songs. They all went together like a nice little collection of songs. So I wrote an album of a collection of sounds called Pet Sounds'.
He said at the time that the reason Smile was never released was "it wasn't really appropriate music for us. It wasn't the right kind of music".
'Smile' will be officially released on September 30.
The tracklisting is:
1. Our Prayer / Gee
2. Heroes and Villains
3. Roll Plymouth Rock
4. Barnyard
5. Old Master Painter / You Are My Sunshine
6. Cabin Essence
7. Wonderful
8. Song For Children
9. Child Is Father of the Man
10. Surf's Up
11. I'm In Great Shape / I Wanna Be Around / Workshop
12. Vega-Tables
13. On a Holiday
14. Wind Chimes
15. Mrs. O'Leary's Cow
16. In Blue Hawaii
17. Good Vibrations
By Paul Cashmere
Legendary Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson has put his Smile in order. The long awaited album has finally be pieced together for the first time with a tracklist order.
Wilson recently performed the 35 year old lost materpiece for English audiences and has since re-recorded the never released Beach Boys album for release in September.
Smile was to have been the follow-up to the classic 'Pet Sounds' album of 1966 but it was scrapped before release. Wilson told Undercover just prior to his Australian tour in 2002 that 'Smile' was inspired by The Beatles 'Sgt Pepper' which was inspired by his own 'Pet Sounds' album which was inspired by their 'Rubber Soul'. "I was listening to Rubber Soul one night and I could not believe my ears" he told Undercover News in 2002. "I loved those songs. They all went together like a nice little collection of songs. So I wrote an album of a collection of sounds called Pet Sounds'.
He said at the time that the reason Smile was never released was "it wasn't really appropriate music for us. It wasn't the right kind of music".
'Smile' will be officially released on September 30.
The tracklisting is:
1. Our Prayer / Gee
2. Heroes and Villains
3. Roll Plymouth Rock
4. Barnyard
5. Old Master Painter / You Are My Sunshine
6. Cabin Essence
7. Wonderful
8. Song For Children
9. Child Is Father of the Man
10. Surf's Up
11. I'm In Great Shape / I Wanna Be Around / Workshop
12. Vega-Tables
13. On a Holiday
14. Wind Chimes
15. Mrs. O'Leary's Cow
16. In Blue Hawaii
17. Good Vibrations
By Paul Cashmere
CARACAS DISPATCH
The Price of Dissent in Venezuela
Hugo Chávez's thugs celebrate their "victory" by shooting my mother.
BY THOR L. HALVORSSEN
CARACAS, Venezuela--On Monday afternoon, dozens of people assembled in the Altamira Plaza, a public square in a residential neighborhood here that has come to symbolize nonviolent dissent in Venezuela. The crowd was there to question the accuracy of the results that announced a triumph for President Hugo Chávez in Sunday's recall referendum.
Within one hour of the gathering, just over 100 of Lt. Col. Chávez's supporters, many of them brandishing his trademark army parachutist beret, began moving down the main avenue towards the crowd in the square. Encouraged by their leader's victory, this bully-boy group had been marching through opposition neighborhoods all day. They were led by men on motorcycles with two-way radios. From afar they began to taunt the crowd in the square, chanting, "We own this country now," and ordering the people in the opposition crowd to return to their homes. All of this was transmitted live by the local news station. The Chávez group threw bottles and rocks at the crowd. Moments later a young woman in the square screamed for the crowd to get down as three of the men with walkie-talkies, wearing red T-shirts with the insignia of the government-funded "Bolivarian Circle," revealed their firearms. They began shooting indiscriminately into the multitude.
A 61-year-old grandmother was shot in the back as she ran for cover. The bullet ripped through her aorta, kidney and stomach. She later bled to death in the emergency room. An opposition congressman was shot in the shoulder and remains in critical care. Eight others suffered severe gunshot wounds. Hilda Mendoza Denham, a British subject visiting Caracas for her mother's 80th birthday, was shot at close range with hollow-point bullets from a high-caliber pistol. She now lies sedated in a hospital bed after a long and complicated operation. She is my mother.
I spoke with her minutes before the doctors cut open her wounds. She looked at me, frightened and traumatized, and sobbed: "I was sure they were going to kill me, they just kept shooting at me."
In a jarringly similar attack that took place three years ago, the killers were caught on tape and identified as government officials and employees. They were briefly detained--only to be released and later praised by Col. Chávez in his weekly radio show. Their identities are no secret and they walk the streets as free men, despite having shot unarmed civilian demonstrators in cold blood.
I was not in the square on Monday. I was preparing a complaint for the National Electoral Council regarding the fact that I had been mysteriously erased from the voter rolls and was prevented from casting a vote on Sunday. In indescribable agony I watched the television as my mother and my elderly grandparents--who were both trampled and bruised in the panic--became casualties in Venezuela's ongoing political crisis.
Col. Chávez assumed power in 1999. One need not go into great detail about the deterioration of Venezuelan life since then to understand why a recall referendum has been years in the making. Every aspect of existence has worsened. The only people who are not profoundly affected are those at the highest levels of the government party. Poverty, for instance, is at an all-time high and the country is afflicted, for the first time ever recorded, with malnutrition on a massive scale. This unprecedented suffering has occurred during the greatest oil boom in the nation's history (Venezuela has oil reserves on the scale of those in Iraq). Col. Chávez and his "revolution" have not only led a ferocious assault on civil liberties, but have also needlessly alienated one of Venezuela's closest allies, the U.S.
The recall referendum process has been obstructed and delayed at every turn. Dozens of independent polls predicted defeat for Col. Chávez, who did everything--including granting citizenship to half a million illegal aliens in a crude vote-buying scheme and "migrating" existing voters away from their local election office--to fix the results in his favor. One opposition leader was moved to a voting center in a city seven hours away. Another man, Miguel Romero, had for years voted in his neighborhood school in a Caracas suburb. But this time the Electoral Council computer indicated that he was to vote at the Venezuelan Embassy in Stockholm. Thousands of others, like me, were wiped from the voting rolls. Ironically, in the runup to the vote, the embassy in Stockholm, like Venezuelan diplomatic posts around the world, inexplicably ran out of passports. Many Venezuelan expatriates were thus prevented from returning to their country to vote.
In the early hours of Monday, the Electoral Council's president (who had imposed a gag order on all exit polls until a full audit of the vote had been completed) issued a statement declaring that the computer votes had been tallied and that the government had won the referendum with 58% of the vote. The announcement came in a vacuum, without an audit, with no verification whatsoever from the international observers, and over the indignant protest of two of the five council members, who publicly questioned the result's transparency.
The opposition, understandably shocked and demoralized, insisted on a hand-count of all computer voting receipts as the only way of settling the dramatic disparity between exit polls that showed 58% to 41% in favor of the recall and the announced result of 58% to 41% in favor of retaining Col. Chávez. Later that morning the most important observer, former President Jimmy Carter, declared that he was shown the computer tally by government supporters and that everything seemed in order. Mr. Carter then left Venezuela, and the opposition groups that had put their faith in him to facilitate a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Mr. Carter, who was vociferous and insistent about patience, transparency and hand-tallies during the Florida recount, left Venezuela to attend Mrs. Carter's birthday party.
Many in the opposition are baffled by the inverse relationship between the projected numbers and those reported by the Chávez regime. One possible clue to this remarkable phenomenon lies with the companies hired to supply the voting machines and the software. Smartmatic Corp., a Florida company that has never before supplied election machinery, is owned by two Venezuelans. The software came from Bizta Software, owned by the same two people. The Miami Herald recently revealed that the Chávez regime spent $200,000 last year to purchase 28% of Bizta and put a government official and longtime Chávez ally on the board. After the story broke, Bizta bought back the government-held shares and the official resigned from the board. But not until after the two companies were granted a significant part of the $91 million contract for the referendum. Executives at both Smartmatic and Bizta have denied any political allegiance to the Chávez regime and have issued public statements saying the contract was awarded purely on the merits.
Col. Chávez has publicly stated that the results of the referendum are irreversible and permanent and that the revolution will now intensify. He is firmly in control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government; the armed forces; electoral bodies and two-thirds of the country's economy.
In a free and decent society, it is not a crime to differ with the democratic government. The vast distance between democracy and contemporary Venezuela may be seen in the depth of Col. Chávez's disregard for Monday's bloodbath. Blithely ignoring the overwhelming video evidence that a massacre had taken place in his name, he minimized the incident's importance and suggested that the gunmen were most likely linked to opposition groups. His reactions chillingly indicate the fate that might befall the millions of Venezuelans who oppose him, and who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid political violence in registering their dissent by peaceful protest or by vote.
Mr. Halvorssen is First Amendment scholar at The Commonwealth Foundation. He lives in New York.
The Price of Dissent in Venezuela
Hugo Chávez's thugs celebrate their "victory" by shooting my mother.
BY THOR L. HALVORSSEN
CARACAS, Venezuela--On Monday afternoon, dozens of people assembled in the Altamira Plaza, a public square in a residential neighborhood here that has come to symbolize nonviolent dissent in Venezuela. The crowd was there to question the accuracy of the results that announced a triumph for President Hugo Chávez in Sunday's recall referendum.
Within one hour of the gathering, just over 100 of Lt. Col. Chávez's supporters, many of them brandishing his trademark army parachutist beret, began moving down the main avenue towards the crowd in the square. Encouraged by their leader's victory, this bully-boy group had been marching through opposition neighborhoods all day. They were led by men on motorcycles with two-way radios. From afar they began to taunt the crowd in the square, chanting, "We own this country now," and ordering the people in the opposition crowd to return to their homes. All of this was transmitted live by the local news station. The Chávez group threw bottles and rocks at the crowd. Moments later a young woman in the square screamed for the crowd to get down as three of the men with walkie-talkies, wearing red T-shirts with the insignia of the government-funded "Bolivarian Circle," revealed their firearms. They began shooting indiscriminately into the multitude.
A 61-year-old grandmother was shot in the back as she ran for cover. The bullet ripped through her aorta, kidney and stomach. She later bled to death in the emergency room. An opposition congressman was shot in the shoulder and remains in critical care. Eight others suffered severe gunshot wounds. Hilda Mendoza Denham, a British subject visiting Caracas for her mother's 80th birthday, was shot at close range with hollow-point bullets from a high-caliber pistol. She now lies sedated in a hospital bed after a long and complicated operation. She is my mother.
I spoke with her minutes before the doctors cut open her wounds. She looked at me, frightened and traumatized, and sobbed: "I was sure they were going to kill me, they just kept shooting at me."
In a jarringly similar attack that took place three years ago, the killers were caught on tape and identified as government officials and employees. They were briefly detained--only to be released and later praised by Col. Chávez in his weekly radio show. Their identities are no secret and they walk the streets as free men, despite having shot unarmed civilian demonstrators in cold blood.
I was not in the square on Monday. I was preparing a complaint for the National Electoral Council regarding the fact that I had been mysteriously erased from the voter rolls and was prevented from casting a vote on Sunday. In indescribable agony I watched the television as my mother and my elderly grandparents--who were both trampled and bruised in the panic--became casualties in Venezuela's ongoing political crisis.
Col. Chávez assumed power in 1999. One need not go into great detail about the deterioration of Venezuelan life since then to understand why a recall referendum has been years in the making. Every aspect of existence has worsened. The only people who are not profoundly affected are those at the highest levels of the government party. Poverty, for instance, is at an all-time high and the country is afflicted, for the first time ever recorded, with malnutrition on a massive scale. This unprecedented suffering has occurred during the greatest oil boom in the nation's history (Venezuela has oil reserves on the scale of those in Iraq). Col. Chávez and his "revolution" have not only led a ferocious assault on civil liberties, but have also needlessly alienated one of Venezuela's closest allies, the U.S.
The recall referendum process has been obstructed and delayed at every turn. Dozens of independent polls predicted defeat for Col. Chávez, who did everything--including granting citizenship to half a million illegal aliens in a crude vote-buying scheme and "migrating" existing voters away from their local election office--to fix the results in his favor. One opposition leader was moved to a voting center in a city seven hours away. Another man, Miguel Romero, had for years voted in his neighborhood school in a Caracas suburb. But this time the Electoral Council computer indicated that he was to vote at the Venezuelan Embassy in Stockholm. Thousands of others, like me, were wiped from the voting rolls. Ironically, in the runup to the vote, the embassy in Stockholm, like Venezuelan diplomatic posts around the world, inexplicably ran out of passports. Many Venezuelan expatriates were thus prevented from returning to their country to vote.
In the early hours of Monday, the Electoral Council's president (who had imposed a gag order on all exit polls until a full audit of the vote had been completed) issued a statement declaring that the computer votes had been tallied and that the government had won the referendum with 58% of the vote. The announcement came in a vacuum, without an audit, with no verification whatsoever from the international observers, and over the indignant protest of two of the five council members, who publicly questioned the result's transparency.
The opposition, understandably shocked and demoralized, insisted on a hand-count of all computer voting receipts as the only way of settling the dramatic disparity between exit polls that showed 58% to 41% in favor of the recall and the announced result of 58% to 41% in favor of retaining Col. Chávez. Later that morning the most important observer, former President Jimmy Carter, declared that he was shown the computer tally by government supporters and that everything seemed in order. Mr. Carter then left Venezuela, and the opposition groups that had put their faith in him to facilitate a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Mr. Carter, who was vociferous and insistent about patience, transparency and hand-tallies during the Florida recount, left Venezuela to attend Mrs. Carter's birthday party.
Many in the opposition are baffled by the inverse relationship between the projected numbers and those reported by the Chávez regime. One possible clue to this remarkable phenomenon lies with the companies hired to supply the voting machines and the software. Smartmatic Corp., a Florida company that has never before supplied election machinery, is owned by two Venezuelans. The software came from Bizta Software, owned by the same two people. The Miami Herald recently revealed that the Chávez regime spent $200,000 last year to purchase 28% of Bizta and put a government official and longtime Chávez ally on the board. After the story broke, Bizta bought back the government-held shares and the official resigned from the board. But not until after the two companies were granted a significant part of the $91 million contract for the referendum. Executives at both Smartmatic and Bizta have denied any political allegiance to the Chávez regime and have issued public statements saying the contract was awarded purely on the merits.
Col. Chávez has publicly stated that the results of the referendum are irreversible and permanent and that the revolution will now intensify. He is firmly in control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government; the armed forces; electoral bodies and two-thirds of the country's economy.
In a free and decent society, it is not a crime to differ with the democratic government. The vast distance between democracy and contemporary Venezuela may be seen in the depth of Col. Chávez's disregard for Monday's bloodbath. Blithely ignoring the overwhelming video evidence that a massacre had taken place in his name, he minimized the incident's importance and suggested that the gunmen were most likely linked to opposition groups. His reactions chillingly indicate the fate that might befall the millions of Venezuelans who oppose him, and who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid political violence in registering their dissent by peaceful protest or by vote.
Mr. Halvorssen is First Amendment scholar at The Commonwealth Foundation. He lives in New York.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Ballad Of The French Berets
by Ann Coulter
There ought to be a special word -- something German -- to describe the feeling of revulsion normal people experience when reading lines like these from a single article on John Kerry by Laura Blumenfeld in The Washington Post:
-- "Kerry's complexity has been an issue since his national debut in 1971."
-- "Kerry likes to quote the French writer Andre Gide: 'Don't try to understand me too quickly.'"
-- "His friend Dan Barbiero said it comes down to Kerry's complexity ..."
(Apparently, Kerry's answers on the LSAT were too nuanced and complex for the Harvard Law School admissions committee: Despite all his connections, fancy education and war-protesting, Kerry couldn't get into Harvard Law School and went to Boston College Law School instead. Wait -- didn't Kerry throw that famous, game-winning "Hail Mary" pass while playing quarterback for Boston College back in the '80s? Or am I thinking of somebody else? Let's ask Doug Brinkley!)
-- "Flying to his next campaign stop, he chatted about maneuvers to avoid flak in combat."
-- "This was Primal John ... who ran with the bulls at Pamplona and, when trampled, got up, chased the bull, and grabbed for its horns."
(I'm almost sure this was a polite reference to John and Teresa's honeymoon night.)
The problem with a suck-up press for Democrats is that with no adversary press to call them on it, Democrats develop wilder and wilder Walter Mitty fantasy lives until finally one day, when they are at the zenith of their political careers, someone notices that they're not Irish, they didn't deserve their war medals, 254 Swift Boat veterans hate them, and they didn't spend Christmas Eve, 1968, in Cambodia. (Or that they are white-trash serial molesters and unrepentant rapists who somehow talked their way into an Arkansas governorship.)
The Boston Globe biography of Kerry published earlier this year compliantly repeats Kerry's yarn about how he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia "despite President Nixon's assurances that there was no combat action in this neutral territory."
Only recently did someone point out: (1) Kerry was 55 miles away from the Cambodian border on Christmas 1968 and (2) Nixon wasn't president in 1968. (How did "historian" Doug Brinkley miss that in his biography of Kerry?)
The media will spend weeks going through pay stubs for Bush's National Guard service in Alabama in the waning days of war, but if Kerry tells them exotic tales of covert missions into Cambodia directed by Richard Nixon, they don't even bother to fact-check who was president in December 1968.
Tom Harkin, Crazed Moron, was shouting this week that Dick Cheney is a "coward," evidently for not fighting in Vietnam like Harkin. Except Harkin didn't fight in Vietnam either! The last time Harkin was bragging about his Vietnam service was in 1984 when he told David Broder of The Washington Post: "I spent five years as a Navy pilot, starting in November of 1962. One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions."
Sen. Barry Goldwater -- not the Post -- checked with the Defense Department and soon Harkin was forced to admit he had never been in combat in Vietnam, but was based in Japan during the war, ferrying damaged planes from the Saigon airport to Japan for repairs. Oops!
Then there was Al Gore who, like Kerry, was in Vietnam just long enough to get photos for his future political campaigns. (Apparently all future Democratic politicians take cameras to war zones.)
Gore enlisted in the Army in 1970 in a calculated gambit to help his senator dad in an election year. Young Al was given a cushy job writing for the Stars and Stripes newspaper, a bodyguard, and an exit strategy when Pops lost the election. After five months of this hygienic tour of duty, Little Lord Fauntleroy asked to come home, and before long he was safe and sound and preparing to flunk out of divinity school and then drop out of law school.
But over the next 30 years, Gore provided the media with increasingly macho reminiscences of his combat experiences in Vietnam -- almost as vivid and stirring as the impassioned account he gave of being a tobacco farmer.
-- "I pulled my turn on the perimeter at night and walked through the elephant grass and I was fired upon." (The Baltimore Sun)
-- "I took my turn regularly on the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would move, we'd fire first and ask questions later." (Vanity Fair)
-- "I was shot at. I spent most of my time in the field." (The Washington Post)
I think someone needs to explain to the Democrats that having your picture taken is not what most veterans mean by "being shot at."
During World War II, then-congressman Lyndon Johnson went on a single flight -- as an observer -- for which he was awarded the Silver Star by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Only recently has it been exposed that the medal was a complete fraud, probably awarded by MacArthur to curry favor with a congressman.
At the time, no one in the press bothered to investigate why Johnson was the only member of the crew to receive any sort of decoration for the 13-minute flight that never came under enemy fire -- and on which Johnson was merely an "observer." For the rest of his life Johnson got away with wearing what historian David Halberstam called "the least deserved and most proudly displayed Silver Star in military history."
Johnson told harrowing tales of his uneventful 13-minute flight, boasting that the men had called him "Raider Johnson." One time he harangued a congressman on foreign aid, saying: "I know foreign aid is unpopular, but I didn't want to go to the Pacific in '41 after Pearl Harbor, but I did. I didn't want to let those Japs shoot at me ... but I did."
The sole surviving member of the crew, Ret. Staff Sgt. Bob Marshall, U.S. Army, a gunner on the plane, disputed Johnson's story about being attacked by Japanese Zeros: "No way. No, that story was made up ... we had never seen a Zero. It was never attacked. There was nothing."
If only talk radio and cable TV had been around in the '60s, we'd be able to hear James Carville call Bob Marshall a liar and watch the Democratic National Committee threaten to sue any TV station that aired his story.
by Ann Coulter
There ought to be a special word -- something German -- to describe the feeling of revulsion normal people experience when reading lines like these from a single article on John Kerry by Laura Blumenfeld in The Washington Post:
-- "Kerry's complexity has been an issue since his national debut in 1971."
-- "Kerry likes to quote the French writer Andre Gide: 'Don't try to understand me too quickly.'"
-- "His friend Dan Barbiero said it comes down to Kerry's complexity ..."
(Apparently, Kerry's answers on the LSAT were too nuanced and complex for the Harvard Law School admissions committee: Despite all his connections, fancy education and war-protesting, Kerry couldn't get into Harvard Law School and went to Boston College Law School instead. Wait -- didn't Kerry throw that famous, game-winning "Hail Mary" pass while playing quarterback for Boston College back in the '80s? Or am I thinking of somebody else? Let's ask Doug Brinkley!)
-- "Flying to his next campaign stop, he chatted about maneuvers to avoid flak in combat."
-- "This was Primal John ... who ran with the bulls at Pamplona and, when trampled, got up, chased the bull, and grabbed for its horns."
(I'm almost sure this was a polite reference to John and Teresa's honeymoon night.)
The problem with a suck-up press for Democrats is that with no adversary press to call them on it, Democrats develop wilder and wilder Walter Mitty fantasy lives until finally one day, when they are at the zenith of their political careers, someone notices that they're not Irish, they didn't deserve their war medals, 254 Swift Boat veterans hate them, and they didn't spend Christmas Eve, 1968, in Cambodia. (Or that they are white-trash serial molesters and unrepentant rapists who somehow talked their way into an Arkansas governorship.)
The Boston Globe biography of Kerry published earlier this year compliantly repeats Kerry's yarn about how he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia "despite President Nixon's assurances that there was no combat action in this neutral territory."
Only recently did someone point out: (1) Kerry was 55 miles away from the Cambodian border on Christmas 1968 and (2) Nixon wasn't president in 1968. (How did "historian" Doug Brinkley miss that in his biography of Kerry?)
The media will spend weeks going through pay stubs for Bush's National Guard service in Alabama in the waning days of war, but if Kerry tells them exotic tales of covert missions into Cambodia directed by Richard Nixon, they don't even bother to fact-check who was president in December 1968.
Tom Harkin, Crazed Moron, was shouting this week that Dick Cheney is a "coward," evidently for not fighting in Vietnam like Harkin. Except Harkin didn't fight in Vietnam either! The last time Harkin was bragging about his Vietnam service was in 1984 when he told David Broder of The Washington Post: "I spent five years as a Navy pilot, starting in November of 1962. One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions."
Sen. Barry Goldwater -- not the Post -- checked with the Defense Department and soon Harkin was forced to admit he had never been in combat in Vietnam, but was based in Japan during the war, ferrying damaged planes from the Saigon airport to Japan for repairs. Oops!
Then there was Al Gore who, like Kerry, was in Vietnam just long enough to get photos for his future political campaigns. (Apparently all future Democratic politicians take cameras to war zones.)
Gore enlisted in the Army in 1970 in a calculated gambit to help his senator dad in an election year. Young Al was given a cushy job writing for the Stars and Stripes newspaper, a bodyguard, and an exit strategy when Pops lost the election. After five months of this hygienic tour of duty, Little Lord Fauntleroy asked to come home, and before long he was safe and sound and preparing to flunk out of divinity school and then drop out of law school.
But over the next 30 years, Gore provided the media with increasingly macho reminiscences of his combat experiences in Vietnam -- almost as vivid and stirring as the impassioned account he gave of being a tobacco farmer.
-- "I pulled my turn on the perimeter at night and walked through the elephant grass and I was fired upon." (The Baltimore Sun)
-- "I took my turn regularly on the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would move, we'd fire first and ask questions later." (Vanity Fair)
-- "I was shot at. I spent most of my time in the field." (The Washington Post)
I think someone needs to explain to the Democrats that having your picture taken is not what most veterans mean by "being shot at."
During World War II, then-congressman Lyndon Johnson went on a single flight -- as an observer -- for which he was awarded the Silver Star by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Only recently has it been exposed that the medal was a complete fraud, probably awarded by MacArthur to curry favor with a congressman.
At the time, no one in the press bothered to investigate why Johnson was the only member of the crew to receive any sort of decoration for the 13-minute flight that never came under enemy fire -- and on which Johnson was merely an "observer." For the rest of his life Johnson got away with wearing what historian David Halberstam called "the least deserved and most proudly displayed Silver Star in military history."
Johnson told harrowing tales of his uneventful 13-minute flight, boasting that the men had called him "Raider Johnson." One time he harangued a congressman on foreign aid, saying: "I know foreign aid is unpopular, but I didn't want to go to the Pacific in '41 after Pearl Harbor, but I did. I didn't want to let those Japs shoot at me ... but I did."
The sole surviving member of the crew, Ret. Staff Sgt. Bob Marshall, U.S. Army, a gunner on the plane, disputed Johnson's story about being attacked by Japanese Zeros: "No way. No, that story was made up ... we had never seen a Zero. It was never attacked. There was nothing."
If only talk radio and cable TV had been around in the '60s, we'd be able to hear James Carville call Bob Marshall a liar and watch the Democratic National Committee threaten to sue any TV station that aired his story.
The unmaking of a president?
by George F. Will
On Oct. 23, just 10 days before the election, the war in Iraq will have lasted as long as the 584-day U.S. involvement in World War I, from the April 6, 1917, declaration of war to the Nov. 11, 1918, armistice. And probably in late September or early October the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq will pass 1,000.
The war already has lasted longer than the Spanish-American War (230 days), and on Dec. 9, 42 days before the next president is inaugurated, the war will be longer than was the war with Mexico (630 days). It will not last as long as the war against Philippine insurgents (4,000 U.S. and 200,000 Philippine dead) that followed U.S annexation and festered intermittently for 14 years. The annexation was defended in 1901 by the president of Princeton University:
"The East is to be opened and transformed, whether we will it or not; the standards of the West are to be imposed upon it; nations and peoples who have stood still the centuries through are to be quickened and to be made part of the universal world of commerce and of ideas. ..."
Such thinking was already an American tradition. In 1846, on the eve of the war with Mexico, a New York poet, whose optimism did not exceed the Polk administration's, said Mexicans would be chanting, "The Saxons are coming, our freedom is nigh."
But "Death to the Gringos" is what Mexican schoolchildren were chanting in April 1914, in response to President (by now of the United States, not just Princeton) Wilson's dispatch of U.S. troops to Mexico, pursuant to his belief that "every nation of the world needs to be drawn into the tutelage of America." However, by 1918, regarding post-revolution Russia, he declared:
"My policy regarding Russia is very similar to my Mexican policy. I believe in letting them work out their own salvation, even though they wallow in anarchy for a while."
These excavations from America's rhetorical record are from John Judis' new book, "The Folly of Empire," a sobering read during Iraq's current wallow. Iraq's condition is not quite anarchy, but it does point to a double peril of producing democracy.
Democracy, loosely -- very loosely -- defined as government responsive to gusts of public passions, might fail. Or it might succeed ruinously. A government that is all sail and no anchor might produce popular choices that lead through anarchy to civil war (American democracy led there), or national fragmentation, or fragmentation forestalled by Bonepartism, Francoism or some other variant of authoritarianism.
The Bush campaign is pelting John Kerry with dead cats because of his promise to wage a more "sensitive" war on terrorism -- Democrats tend to think in the vocabulary of the therapeutic society and its "caring professions." But the Bush administration is simultaneously struggling to balance the competing imperatives of economizing American lives and waging a war sensitive to the religious sensibilities at stake in the struggle for control of Najaf.
In all this, the concept of sovereignty is being pounded shapeless. Pre-emptive war was waged, in part, to notify America's enemies that American sovereignty could not be paralyzed by world opinion or the noncooperation of international institutions. And one measure of progress in Iraq was the June 28 transfer of sovereignty to Iraq.
But in a New York Times story from Najaf, readers learn, regarding the problem of Moqtada Sadr and his militia, that a Marine spokesman says "we'll continue operations as the prime minister (Ayad Allawi) sees fit." And readers learn that U.S. commanders "curbed a broader national amnesty proposal announced by Dr. Allawi earlier this week, limiting its terms to exclude any rebels who have taken part in actions killing or wounding American troops."
So does sovereignty reside with the prime minister, whose will evidently commands U.S. commanders? Or with those commanders, who curb the prime minister's will?
A house so divided cannot stand. If it is the prime minister's will, or that of Iraq's embryonic democratic institutions, to conduct with insurgent factions negotiations that strip the Iraqi state of an essential attribute of statehood -- a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence -- the U.S. presence will swiftly become untenable.
Untenable even before what may be coming before November: an Iraqi version of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968. To say that the coming offensive will be by "Baathists" is, according to one administration official, akin to saying "Nazis" when you mean "the SS" -- the most fearsome of the Nazis. Such an offensive could make Sadr's insurgency seem a minor irritant. And it could unmake a presidency, as Tet did.
George F. Will can be reached at georgewill@washpost.com
by George F. Will
On Oct. 23, just 10 days before the election, the war in Iraq will have lasted as long as the 584-day U.S. involvement in World War I, from the April 6, 1917, declaration of war to the Nov. 11, 1918, armistice. And probably in late September or early October the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq will pass 1,000.
The war already has lasted longer than the Spanish-American War (230 days), and on Dec. 9, 42 days before the next president is inaugurated, the war will be longer than was the war with Mexico (630 days). It will not last as long as the war against Philippine insurgents (4,000 U.S. and 200,000 Philippine dead) that followed U.S annexation and festered intermittently for 14 years. The annexation was defended in 1901 by the president of Princeton University:
"The East is to be opened and transformed, whether we will it or not; the standards of the West are to be imposed upon it; nations and peoples who have stood still the centuries through are to be quickened and to be made part of the universal world of commerce and of ideas. ..."
Such thinking was already an American tradition. In 1846, on the eve of the war with Mexico, a New York poet, whose optimism did not exceed the Polk administration's, said Mexicans would be chanting, "The Saxons are coming, our freedom is nigh."
But "Death to the Gringos" is what Mexican schoolchildren were chanting in April 1914, in response to President (by now of the United States, not just Princeton) Wilson's dispatch of U.S. troops to Mexico, pursuant to his belief that "every nation of the world needs to be drawn into the tutelage of America." However, by 1918, regarding post-revolution Russia, he declared:
"My policy regarding Russia is very similar to my Mexican policy. I believe in letting them work out their own salvation, even though they wallow in anarchy for a while."
These excavations from America's rhetorical record are from John Judis' new book, "The Folly of Empire," a sobering read during Iraq's current wallow. Iraq's condition is not quite anarchy, but it does point to a double peril of producing democracy.
Democracy, loosely -- very loosely -- defined as government responsive to gusts of public passions, might fail. Or it might succeed ruinously. A government that is all sail and no anchor might produce popular choices that lead through anarchy to civil war (American democracy led there), or national fragmentation, or fragmentation forestalled by Bonepartism, Francoism or some other variant of authoritarianism.
The Bush campaign is pelting John Kerry with dead cats because of his promise to wage a more "sensitive" war on terrorism -- Democrats tend to think in the vocabulary of the therapeutic society and its "caring professions." But the Bush administration is simultaneously struggling to balance the competing imperatives of economizing American lives and waging a war sensitive to the religious sensibilities at stake in the struggle for control of Najaf.
In all this, the concept of sovereignty is being pounded shapeless. Pre-emptive war was waged, in part, to notify America's enemies that American sovereignty could not be paralyzed by world opinion or the noncooperation of international institutions. And one measure of progress in Iraq was the June 28 transfer of sovereignty to Iraq.
But in a New York Times story from Najaf, readers learn, regarding the problem of Moqtada Sadr and his militia, that a Marine spokesman says "we'll continue operations as the prime minister (Ayad Allawi) sees fit." And readers learn that U.S. commanders "curbed a broader national amnesty proposal announced by Dr. Allawi earlier this week, limiting its terms to exclude any rebels who have taken part in actions killing or wounding American troops."
So does sovereignty reside with the prime minister, whose will evidently commands U.S. commanders? Or with those commanders, who curb the prime minister's will?
A house so divided cannot stand. If it is the prime minister's will, or that of Iraq's embryonic democratic institutions, to conduct with insurgent factions negotiations that strip the Iraqi state of an essential attribute of statehood -- a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence -- the U.S. presence will swiftly become untenable.
Untenable even before what may be coming before November: an Iraqi version of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968. To say that the coming offensive will be by "Baathists" is, according to one administration official, akin to saying "Nazis" when you mean "the SS" -- the most fearsome of the Nazis. Such an offensive could make Sadr's insurgency seem a minor irritant. And it could unmake a presidency, as Tet did.
George F. Will can be reached at georgewill@washpost.com
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Do you want to sing Waterloo or fight it?
By Mark Steyn
'We won't come back till it's over/Over There!' sang America's doughboys, marching off to war in 1917. In the Second World War, they had other songs to sing, which is just as well because, even though the World War was over over there 60 years ago, and the Cold War was over 15 years ago, only now are the Yanks heading home.
In the largest military realignment in years, Washington plans to withdraw 70,000 troops plus 100,000 family members and support personnel from overseas US bases. That means, for the most part, from Europe.
This will undoubtedly be welcome news to the likes of Goran Persson, the Swedish prime minister, who famously declared that the purpose of the European Union is that "it's one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to US world domination". It must surely be awfully embarrassing to be the first superpower in history to be permanently garrisoned by your principal rival superpower. But it's also grand news for those of us who've long argued that America's six-decade security guarantee to Europe has been a massive strategic error.
The basic flaw in the Atlantic "alliance" is that, for almost all its participants, the free world is a free lunch: a defence pact of wealthy nations in which only one guy picks up the tab. I said as much in a Canadian column I wrote on 9/11, and a few weeks later the dominion's deputy prime minister, John Manley, conceded that his country was dining in the best restaurants without paying its way: as he put it, "You can't just sit at the G8 table and then, when the bill comes, go to the washroom." But in Nato, for generations, whenever the bill's come, there's been a stampede to the washroom, not just from the Canadians but the Continentals, too.
Like any other form of welfare, defence welfare is a hard habit to break and profoundly damaging to the recipient. The peculiarly obnoxious character of modern Europe is a logical consequence of Washington's willingness to absolve it of responsibility for its own security. Our Defence Editor, John Keegan, once wrote that "without armed forces a state does not exist".
That's true in a certain sense. But, in another, for wealthy nations who've found a sugar daddy, it's marvellously liberating. You're able to preen and pose on the world stage secure in the knowledge that nobody expects you to do anything about it. Bret Stephens, the editor of the Jerusalem Post, opened his mail the other day and found a copy of something called "Conclusions of the European Council", a summary of the work done during the six months of the Irish Euro-presidency. He made the mistake of reading it.
Here's item 80: "The European Council expresses its deep concern at the recent events in the Eastern Congo, which could jeopardise the transition process."
Been following that one? Europe is free to flaunt its "concern" – and even its "deep concern" – over the Eastern Congo precisely because it's entirely irrelevant to events in the Eastern Congo. As Stephens points out, European countries now have attitudes in inverse proportion to the likelihood of their acting upon them. They're like my hippy-dippy Vermont neighbours who drive around with "Free Tibet" bumper stickers. Every couple of years, they trade in the Volvo for a Subaru, and painstakingly paste a new "Free Tibet" sticker on the back.
What are they doing to free Tibet? Nothing. Tibet is as unfree now as it was when they started advertising their commitment to a free Tibet. And it will be just as unfree when they buy their next car and slap on the old sticker one mo' time. If Don Rumsfeld were to say, 'Free Tibet'? That's a great idea!
The Third Infantry Division go in on Thursday', all the 'Free Tibet' crowd would be driving around with 'War is not the answer' stickers. When entire nations embrace self-congratulatory holier-than-thou moral poseurdom as a way of life, it's even less attractive. The Belgians weren't half as insufferable when they were the German army's preferred shortcut to France.
For the purposes of the preceding racist generalisation, I should explain that I'm semi-Belgian, but I'm happy to apply the same point to many countries with which I lack consanguinity. At Friday's Olympics ceremony, for example, I noticed the team from liberated Afghanistan drew far more enthusiastic cheers from the Athens crowd than the team of the country that actually liberated them.
Fair enough. But what then is the practical value of their professed support for the Afghans? At the time of the Afghan liberation, a poll found only 5.2 per cent of Greeks supported the war.
A wealthy continent liberated from the burdens of military expenditure is also liberated to a large degree from reality. Poor peoples have no choice but to live in the real world: if a drought wipes out their crops, they starve. Likewise, rich, powerful nations have traditionally required great vigilance to maintain their wealth and power.
But Europe increasingly resembles those insulated celebrities being shuttled around town from one humanitarian gala to another – like Barbra Streisand flying in by private jet to discuss excessive energy consumption with President Clinton. Just as elderly rockers and Hollywood divas are largely free from the tedious responsibilities of rich industrialists or supermarket magnates – payroll costs and plant upgrades – so the EU can flaunt its "concerns" about the world and leave the logistics to others.
The US security umbrella, along with the Eurovision Song Contest, was really the prototype pan-European institution. The Americans helped build a continent in which you could sing Waterloo rather than fight it, and, if in their excessive generosity they accelerated an inclination to softness and decadence, well, it's not their problem. For the wars of the future, it makes sense to have a mobile presence using old colonial bases in the Horn of Africa or old Soviet bases in Central Asia as temporary homes.
The EU, meanwhile, has challenges of its own, and in the coming clash between a shrinking secularised Euro-elite and its swelling Islamist populations it's not clear whether, as James Baker would say, America has a dog in that fight. The only question for the Continent is whether it's over over there in a more profound sense than those singing doughboys ever contemplated.
By Mark Steyn
'We won't come back till it's over/Over There!' sang America's doughboys, marching off to war in 1917. In the Second World War, they had other songs to sing, which is just as well because, even though the World War was over over there 60 years ago, and the Cold War was over 15 years ago, only now are the Yanks heading home.
In the largest military realignment in years, Washington plans to withdraw 70,000 troops plus 100,000 family members and support personnel from overseas US bases. That means, for the most part, from Europe.
This will undoubtedly be welcome news to the likes of Goran Persson, the Swedish prime minister, who famously declared that the purpose of the European Union is that "it's one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to US world domination". It must surely be awfully embarrassing to be the first superpower in history to be permanently garrisoned by your principal rival superpower. But it's also grand news for those of us who've long argued that America's six-decade security guarantee to Europe has been a massive strategic error.
The basic flaw in the Atlantic "alliance" is that, for almost all its participants, the free world is a free lunch: a defence pact of wealthy nations in which only one guy picks up the tab. I said as much in a Canadian column I wrote on 9/11, and a few weeks later the dominion's deputy prime minister, John Manley, conceded that his country was dining in the best restaurants without paying its way: as he put it, "You can't just sit at the G8 table and then, when the bill comes, go to the washroom." But in Nato, for generations, whenever the bill's come, there's been a stampede to the washroom, not just from the Canadians but the Continentals, too.
Like any other form of welfare, defence welfare is a hard habit to break and profoundly damaging to the recipient. The peculiarly obnoxious character of modern Europe is a logical consequence of Washington's willingness to absolve it of responsibility for its own security. Our Defence Editor, John Keegan, once wrote that "without armed forces a state does not exist".
That's true in a certain sense. But, in another, for wealthy nations who've found a sugar daddy, it's marvellously liberating. You're able to preen and pose on the world stage secure in the knowledge that nobody expects you to do anything about it. Bret Stephens, the editor of the Jerusalem Post, opened his mail the other day and found a copy of something called "Conclusions of the European Council", a summary of the work done during the six months of the Irish Euro-presidency. He made the mistake of reading it.
Here's item 80: "The European Council expresses its deep concern at the recent events in the Eastern Congo, which could jeopardise the transition process."
Been following that one? Europe is free to flaunt its "concern" – and even its "deep concern" – over the Eastern Congo precisely because it's entirely irrelevant to events in the Eastern Congo. As Stephens points out, European countries now have attitudes in inverse proportion to the likelihood of their acting upon them. They're like my hippy-dippy Vermont neighbours who drive around with "Free Tibet" bumper stickers. Every couple of years, they trade in the Volvo for a Subaru, and painstakingly paste a new "Free Tibet" sticker on the back.
What are they doing to free Tibet? Nothing. Tibet is as unfree now as it was when they started advertising their commitment to a free Tibet. And it will be just as unfree when they buy their next car and slap on the old sticker one mo' time. If Don Rumsfeld were to say, 'Free Tibet'? That's a great idea!
The Third Infantry Division go in on Thursday', all the 'Free Tibet' crowd would be driving around with 'War is not the answer' stickers. When entire nations embrace self-congratulatory holier-than-thou moral poseurdom as a way of life, it's even less attractive. The Belgians weren't half as insufferable when they were the German army's preferred shortcut to France.
For the purposes of the preceding racist generalisation, I should explain that I'm semi-Belgian, but I'm happy to apply the same point to many countries with which I lack consanguinity. At Friday's Olympics ceremony, for example, I noticed the team from liberated Afghanistan drew far more enthusiastic cheers from the Athens crowd than the team of the country that actually liberated them.
Fair enough. But what then is the practical value of their professed support for the Afghans? At the time of the Afghan liberation, a poll found only 5.2 per cent of Greeks supported the war.
A wealthy continent liberated from the burdens of military expenditure is also liberated to a large degree from reality. Poor peoples have no choice but to live in the real world: if a drought wipes out their crops, they starve. Likewise, rich, powerful nations have traditionally required great vigilance to maintain their wealth and power.
But Europe increasingly resembles those insulated celebrities being shuttled around town from one humanitarian gala to another – like Barbra Streisand flying in by private jet to discuss excessive energy consumption with President Clinton. Just as elderly rockers and Hollywood divas are largely free from the tedious responsibilities of rich industrialists or supermarket magnates – payroll costs and plant upgrades – so the EU can flaunt its "concerns" about the world and leave the logistics to others.
The US security umbrella, along with the Eurovision Song Contest, was really the prototype pan-European institution. The Americans helped build a continent in which you could sing Waterloo rather than fight it, and, if in their excessive generosity they accelerated an inclination to softness and decadence, well, it's not their problem. For the wars of the future, it makes sense to have a mobile presence using old colonial bases in the Horn of Africa or old Soviet bases in Central Asia as temporary homes.
The EU, meanwhile, has challenges of its own, and in the coming clash between a shrinking secularised Euro-elite and its swelling Islamist populations it's not clear whether, as James Baker would say, America has a dog in that fight. The only question for the Continent is whether it's over over there in a more profound sense than those singing doughboys ever contemplated.
Monday, August 16, 2004
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Edwards' malpractice suits leave bitter taste
By Charles Hurt
The American Medical Association lists North Carolina's current health care situation as a "crisis" and blames it on medical-malpractice lawsuits such as the ones that made Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards a millionaire many times over.
One of the most successful personal-injury lawyers in North Carolina history, Mr. Edwards won dozens of lawsuits against doctors and hospitals across the state that he now represents in the Senate. He won more than 50 cases with verdicts or settlements of $1 million or more, according to North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, and 31 of those were medical-malpractice suits.
During his 20 years of suing doctors and hospitals, he pioneered the art of blaming psychiatrists for patients who commit suicide and blaming doctors for delivering babies with cerebral palsy, according to doctors, fellow lawyers and legal observers who followed Mr. Edwards' career in North Carolina.
"The John Edwards we know crushed [obstetrics, gynecology] and neurosurgery in North Carolina," said Dr. Craig VanDerVeer, a Charlotte neurosurgeon. "As a result, thousands of patients lost their health care."
"And all of this for the little people?" he asked, a reference to Mr. Edwards' argument that he represented regular people against mighty foes such as prosperous doctors and big insurance companies. "How many little people do you know who will supply you with $60 million in legal fees over a couple of years?"
Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Edwards declined to comment beyond e-mailing his and John Kerry's "real plan for medical-malpractice reform."
The plan calls for one measure that Mr. Edwards previously had said is meaningless and does not impose caps on verdicts for economic damages or limits on attorneys' fees.
One of his most noted victories was a $23 million settlement he got from a 1995 case -- his last before joining the Senate -- in which he sued the doctor, gynecological clinic, anesthesiologist and hospital involved in the birth of Bailey Griffin, who had cerebral palsy and other medical problems.
Linking complications during childbirth to cerebral palsy became a specialty for Mr. Edwards. In the courtroom, he was known to dramatize the events at birth by speaking to jurors as if he were the unborn baby, begging for help, begging to be let out of the womb.
"He was very good at it," said Dr. John Schmitt, an obstetrician and gynecologist who used to practice in Mr. Edwards' hometown of Raleigh. "But the science behind a lot of his arguments was flawed."
In 2003, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists published a joint study that cast serious doubt on whether events at childbirth cause cerebral palsy. The "vast majority" of cerebral palsy cases originate long before childbirth, according to the study.
"Now, he would have a much harder time proving a lot of his cases," said Dr. Schmitt, who now practices at the University of Virginia Health System.
Another profitable area of litigation for Mr. Edwards was lawsuits against psychiatrists whose patients committed suicide.
In 1991, he won $2.2 million for the estate of a woman who hanged herself in a hospital after being removed from suicide watch. It was the first successful medical-malpractice case in Mr. Edwards' home of Wake County.
During jury selection, Mr. Edwards asked potential jurors whether they could hold a doctor responsible for the suicide of their patients.
"I got a lot of speeches from potential jurors who said they did not understand how that doctor could be responsible," Mr. Edwards recalled in an interview shortly after the trial. Those persons were excluded from the jury.
In the end, Mr. Edwards scored $1.5 million for "wrongful death" and $175,000 in "emotional distress" for the woman's children.
"One thing I was grappling with was how to explain to the jury the difference between loss of companionship and society -- the things under the wrongful-death statute -- and emotional pain and suffering, which superficially sound like the same thing," he said at the time. "What we did was to tell them the wrongful-death damages are for the loss of all the things that a mother does for the child. But the emotional pain and suffering damages represent the grieving. The pain is something you feel over the death of your mother."
In 1995, as Mr. Edwards neared the pinnacle of his success, Lawyers Weekly reported on the state's 50 biggest settlements of the year.
"Like last year, the medical malpractice category leads the new list, accounting for 16 cases -- or 32 percent -- three points better than last year," the magazine reported. "By and large, that upward trend had held since 1992, when only four [medical malpractice] cases made the survey."
Mr. Edwards was singled out.
"Another reason for this year's [medical malpractice] jump was a strong showing by the Raleigh firm of Edwards & Kirby," it reported. "Partner John Edwards was lead counsel in eight of the 16 medical malpractice cases in the top 50."
Later in that article, Mr. Edwards was interviewed about the $5 million he won from doctors who delivered Ethan L. Bedrick, who had cerebral palsy. Mr. Edwards credited the jury focus groups that he routinely used to help prepare his arguments.
"They gave me several bits and pieces of information to use when addressing the jury," Mr. Edwards was quoted saying. "You can use them to decide whether to get involved in a case or whether to accept a settlement offer, but our primary use is trial presentation."
The article went on to observe: "Focus groups can be put together for as little as $300, according to Edwards -- a small investment compared to the $5 million won in Bedrick."
It is not clear just how much Mr. Edwards made as a lawyer, but estimates based on a review of his lawsuit settlements and Senate records place his fortune at about $38 million.
Like many Democrats, Mr. Edwards has benefited from the generosity of fellow trial lawyers, who have given millions of dollars to Mr. Edwards' political campaigns and other political endeavors.
Part of the platform that Mr. Edwards is running on includes medical-malpractice reform. The Democrats' plan would go after insurance companies that increase doctors' premiums and ban lawyers and plaintiffs for 10 years if they file three frivolous lawsuits.
One tenet of their plan would "require that individuals making medical-malpractice claims first go before a qualified medical specialist to make sure a reasonable grievance exists."
However, Mr. Edwards said in a 1995 interview that such pre-screening is unnecessary.
"Pre-screening as a concept is very good, but it's already done by every experienced malpractice lawyer," he told North Carolina Lawyers Weekly.
As a result of these and other cases, insurance rates for doctors have skyrocketed -- putting some out of business and driving others away, especially from rural areas. And doctors who have lost cases to Mr. Edwards have been bankrupted.
Patients, meanwhile, are left with rising health care costs and fewer -- if any -- doctors in their area. It is increasingly a nationwide problem, physicians say.
Dr. VanDerVeer, the Charlotte neurosurgeon, recalled one recent night on duty when two patients arrived in an emergency room in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where the area's last neurosurgeons quit earlier this year.
"No one in Myrtle Beach would accept responsibility for these patients," he said. And because it was raining, the helicopters were grounded, so the patients were loaded into ambulances and driven the four hours to Charlotte.
Upon arrival, one patient had died, and the other learned that she merely had a minor concussion -- and a $6,000 bill for the ambulance ride.
"That's just one little slice of life here," Dr. VanDerVeer said. "It's a direct result of the medical-malpractice situation that John Edwards fomented."
Dr. Schmitt had spent 20 years delivering babies in Raleigh. Though he had no claims against him, his insurance tripled in one year. With no assurances that his rates would ever drop, or just stop rising, he left town.
For Mr. Edwards' part, he doesn't necessarily begrudge the doctors he sues.
In the book he wrote while campaigning for president, "Four Trials," Mr. Edwards referred to the doctors who he'd won millions from in two cases.
"In the E.G. Sawyer case and the Jennifer Campbell case, the defendants were not malevolent but were caring and competent doctors who worked in good hospitals and yet made grievous mistakes," he wrote. "They had erred in their judgment, but no one could despise them."
Doctors, however, take it all a bit more personally.
"We are currently being sued out of existence," Dr. VanDerVeer said. "People have to choose whether they want these lawyers to make gazillions of dollars in pain and suffering awards or whether they want health care."
Edwards' malpractice suits leave bitter taste
By Charles Hurt
The American Medical Association lists North Carolina's current health care situation as a "crisis" and blames it on medical-malpractice lawsuits such as the ones that made Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards a millionaire many times over.
One of the most successful personal-injury lawyers in North Carolina history, Mr. Edwards won dozens of lawsuits against doctors and hospitals across the state that he now represents in the Senate. He won more than 50 cases with verdicts or settlements of $1 million or more, according to North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, and 31 of those were medical-malpractice suits.
During his 20 years of suing doctors and hospitals, he pioneered the art of blaming psychiatrists for patients who commit suicide and blaming doctors for delivering babies with cerebral palsy, according to doctors, fellow lawyers and legal observers who followed Mr. Edwards' career in North Carolina.
"The John Edwards we know crushed [obstetrics, gynecology] and neurosurgery in North Carolina," said Dr. Craig VanDerVeer, a Charlotte neurosurgeon. "As a result, thousands of patients lost their health care."
"And all of this for the little people?" he asked, a reference to Mr. Edwards' argument that he represented regular people against mighty foes such as prosperous doctors and big insurance companies. "How many little people do you know who will supply you with $60 million in legal fees over a couple of years?"
Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Edwards declined to comment beyond e-mailing his and John Kerry's "real plan for medical-malpractice reform."
The plan calls for one measure that Mr. Edwards previously had said is meaningless and does not impose caps on verdicts for economic damages or limits on attorneys' fees.
One of his most noted victories was a $23 million settlement he got from a 1995 case -- his last before joining the Senate -- in which he sued the doctor, gynecological clinic, anesthesiologist and hospital involved in the birth of Bailey Griffin, who had cerebral palsy and other medical problems.
Linking complications during childbirth to cerebral palsy became a specialty for Mr. Edwards. In the courtroom, he was known to dramatize the events at birth by speaking to jurors as if he were the unborn baby, begging for help, begging to be let out of the womb.
"He was very good at it," said Dr. John Schmitt, an obstetrician and gynecologist who used to practice in Mr. Edwards' hometown of Raleigh. "But the science behind a lot of his arguments was flawed."
In 2003, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists published a joint study that cast serious doubt on whether events at childbirth cause cerebral palsy. The "vast majority" of cerebral palsy cases originate long before childbirth, according to the study.
"Now, he would have a much harder time proving a lot of his cases," said Dr. Schmitt, who now practices at the University of Virginia Health System.
Another profitable area of litigation for Mr. Edwards was lawsuits against psychiatrists whose patients committed suicide.
In 1991, he won $2.2 million for the estate of a woman who hanged herself in a hospital after being removed from suicide watch. It was the first successful medical-malpractice case in Mr. Edwards' home of Wake County.
During jury selection, Mr. Edwards asked potential jurors whether they could hold a doctor responsible for the suicide of their patients.
"I got a lot of speeches from potential jurors who said they did not understand how that doctor could be responsible," Mr. Edwards recalled in an interview shortly after the trial. Those persons were excluded from the jury.
In the end, Mr. Edwards scored $1.5 million for "wrongful death" and $175,000 in "emotional distress" for the woman's children.
"One thing I was grappling with was how to explain to the jury the difference between loss of companionship and society -- the things under the wrongful-death statute -- and emotional pain and suffering, which superficially sound like the same thing," he said at the time. "What we did was to tell them the wrongful-death damages are for the loss of all the things that a mother does for the child. But the emotional pain and suffering damages represent the grieving. The pain is something you feel over the death of your mother."
In 1995, as Mr. Edwards neared the pinnacle of his success, Lawyers Weekly reported on the state's 50 biggest settlements of the year.
"Like last year, the medical malpractice category leads the new list, accounting for 16 cases -- or 32 percent -- three points better than last year," the magazine reported. "By and large, that upward trend had held since 1992, when only four [medical malpractice] cases made the survey."
Mr. Edwards was singled out.
"Another reason for this year's [medical malpractice] jump was a strong showing by the Raleigh firm of Edwards & Kirby," it reported. "Partner John Edwards was lead counsel in eight of the 16 medical malpractice cases in the top 50."
Later in that article, Mr. Edwards was interviewed about the $5 million he won from doctors who delivered Ethan L. Bedrick, who had cerebral palsy. Mr. Edwards credited the jury focus groups that he routinely used to help prepare his arguments.
"They gave me several bits and pieces of information to use when addressing the jury," Mr. Edwards was quoted saying. "You can use them to decide whether to get involved in a case or whether to accept a settlement offer, but our primary use is trial presentation."
The article went on to observe: "Focus groups can be put together for as little as $300, according to Edwards -- a small investment compared to the $5 million won in Bedrick."
It is not clear just how much Mr. Edwards made as a lawyer, but estimates based on a review of his lawsuit settlements and Senate records place his fortune at about $38 million.
Like many Democrats, Mr. Edwards has benefited from the generosity of fellow trial lawyers, who have given millions of dollars to Mr. Edwards' political campaigns and other political endeavors.
Part of the platform that Mr. Edwards is running on includes medical-malpractice reform. The Democrats' plan would go after insurance companies that increase doctors' premiums and ban lawyers and plaintiffs for 10 years if they file three frivolous lawsuits.
One tenet of their plan would "require that individuals making medical-malpractice claims first go before a qualified medical specialist to make sure a reasonable grievance exists."
However, Mr. Edwards said in a 1995 interview that such pre-screening is unnecessary.
"Pre-screening as a concept is very good, but it's already done by every experienced malpractice lawyer," he told North Carolina Lawyers Weekly.
As a result of these and other cases, insurance rates for doctors have skyrocketed -- putting some out of business and driving others away, especially from rural areas. And doctors who have lost cases to Mr. Edwards have been bankrupted.
Patients, meanwhile, are left with rising health care costs and fewer -- if any -- doctors in their area. It is increasingly a nationwide problem, physicians say.
Dr. VanDerVeer, the Charlotte neurosurgeon, recalled one recent night on duty when two patients arrived in an emergency room in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where the area's last neurosurgeons quit earlier this year.
"No one in Myrtle Beach would accept responsibility for these patients," he said. And because it was raining, the helicopters were grounded, so the patients were loaded into ambulances and driven the four hours to Charlotte.
Upon arrival, one patient had died, and the other learned that she merely had a minor concussion -- and a $6,000 bill for the ambulance ride.
"That's just one little slice of life here," Dr. VanDerVeer said. "It's a direct result of the medical-malpractice situation that John Edwards fomented."
Dr. Schmitt had spent 20 years delivering babies in Raleigh. Though he had no claims against him, his insurance tripled in one year. With no assurances that his rates would ever drop, or just stop rising, he left town.
For Mr. Edwards' part, he doesn't necessarily begrudge the doctors he sues.
In the book he wrote while campaigning for president, "Four Trials," Mr. Edwards referred to the doctors who he'd won millions from in two cases.
"In the E.G. Sawyer case and the Jennifer Campbell case, the defendants were not malevolent but were caring and competent doctors who worked in good hospitals and yet made grievous mistakes," he wrote. "They had erred in their judgment, but no one could despise them."
Doctors, however, take it all a bit more personally.
"We are currently being sued out of existence," Dr. VanDerVeer said. "People have to choose whether they want these lawyers to make gazillions of dollars in pain and suffering awards or whether they want health care."
Courtesy of Instapundit, from the new blog Froggy Ruminations:
SEALs & Swift boats
Apparently, the latest version of Kerry's Cambodia Chronicles includes the insertion of Navy SEALs by Swift boat into Cambodia in the early part of 1969. Well, I am a former Navy SEAL that served in the 1990s, my father in law is a former SEAL and he served in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam in 1970. I spoke with him about the likelihood that this story could be correct. My contention was that Swift boats were too large to be routinely used as an insertion platform for SEALs.
SEALs typically used the Medium SEAL Support Craft (MSSC) or the LSSC. My dad's platoon, had one of each assigned. These boats were designed by SEALs and specially built for the Teams to use on clandestine riverine insertions at night of usually no more than 8 operators. Swift boats operated in groups as independent entities, and not as insertion/extraction platforms for small units.
Jim Rassman's ODA was probably on there because SF A teams don't have organic boat assets and were using the Swifties because they had no other means of getting where they needed to go. Also, it is my understanding that the engagement with Kerry getting the Bronze Star took place during the day, which leads me to believe the insertion mission was either a large infantry force led by the SF guys, or a civic action type mission for which SF is well known.
Waterborne infiltrations done illegally into a "neutral" country if performed would be done by small groups of operators (less than 8), at night, in a small tributary, by a boat with a very shallow draft and jacuzzi, not propeller drive. To do otherwise, would be ridiculous.
SEALs also did not trust anyone outside of their immediate peer group. They developed their own intel by snatching high ranking VC out of their beds in the middle of the night. They did not share this info outside the platoon, boat guys, and Seawolves helo crews (close fire support assets). They learned early on that passing intel up the chain was a sure way to be compromised on future operations.
In order to get permission to conduct an illegal incursion into Cambodia by Swift boat the following must occur: 1. Extremely fresh intel of a high value target (think U.S. POW, or VC chieftain). 2. Take that intel outside the group and up to intel at a higher level (risking compromise) in order to obtain boat support from the Swifties to go into Cambodia. That is extremely unlikely to the point of absurdity.
Furthermore, neither myself or my father in law knows anyone who was inserted anywhere by a Swift boat during Vietnam. It just wasn't done. It wasn't something SEALs wanted, and it wasn't something Swifties did.
Bottom Line......Kerry is a liar.
posted by Matthew Heidt
SEALs & Swift boats
Apparently, the latest version of Kerry's Cambodia Chronicles includes the insertion of Navy SEALs by Swift boat into Cambodia in the early part of 1969. Well, I am a former Navy SEAL that served in the 1990s, my father in law is a former SEAL and he served in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam in 1970. I spoke with him about the likelihood that this story could be correct. My contention was that Swift boats were too large to be routinely used as an insertion platform for SEALs.
SEALs typically used the Medium SEAL Support Craft (MSSC) or the LSSC. My dad's platoon, had one of each assigned. These boats were designed by SEALs and specially built for the Teams to use on clandestine riverine insertions at night of usually no more than 8 operators. Swift boats operated in groups as independent entities, and not as insertion/extraction platforms for small units.
Jim Rassman's ODA was probably on there because SF A teams don't have organic boat assets and were using the Swifties because they had no other means of getting where they needed to go. Also, it is my understanding that the engagement with Kerry getting the Bronze Star took place during the day, which leads me to believe the insertion mission was either a large infantry force led by the SF guys, or a civic action type mission for which SF is well known.
Waterborne infiltrations done illegally into a "neutral" country if performed would be done by small groups of operators (less than 8), at night, in a small tributary, by a boat with a very shallow draft and jacuzzi, not propeller drive. To do otherwise, would be ridiculous.
SEALs also did not trust anyone outside of their immediate peer group. They developed their own intel by snatching high ranking VC out of their beds in the middle of the night. They did not share this info outside the platoon, boat guys, and Seawolves helo crews (close fire support assets). They learned early on that passing intel up the chain was a sure way to be compromised on future operations.
In order to get permission to conduct an illegal incursion into Cambodia by Swift boat the following must occur: 1. Extremely fresh intel of a high value target (think U.S. POW, or VC chieftain). 2. Take that intel outside the group and up to intel at a higher level (risking compromise) in order to obtain boat support from the Swifties to go into Cambodia. That is extremely unlikely to the point of absurdity.
Furthermore, neither myself or my father in law knows anyone who was inserted anywhere by a Swift boat during Vietnam. It just wasn't done. It wasn't something SEALs wanted, and it wasn't something Swifties did.
Bottom Line......Kerry is a liar.
posted by Matthew Heidt
Sunday, August 15, 2004
From The American Thinker blog:
Twilight of the press gods
The genie is out of the bottle. The best efforts of the mainstream media to blockade the story of Kerry’s lies about Cambodia, and the charges by the vast majority of men who served with him in the Swift Boat operations, have failed. Glenn Reynolds prints a telling letter from a reader who requests anonymity. Read the entire entry, but here are the key sentences:
...last night I was talking to a friend who is a hardcore liberal Democrat and is, in fact, a first cousin of a very well-known Democratic Senator. He was very upset about the Kerry-Swift Vet-Cambodia controversy. He blamed Kerry for the whole thing, saying he had set himself up for this problem by making Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. Two things struck me about this. First, this is a guy who gets all of his news from the biggies - the NYT, NPR, and CNN - and yet he knew all about the story. That means the Big Media filter isn't preventing the story from reaching people. Second, he had concluded that Kerry deserves the criticism and is lacking in credibility. This is a guy who, if there were any yes-but talking points in defense of Kerry, surely would have stuck to them. This says to me that if Big Media is in the tank for Kerry, they may actually have hurt him by not covering this story. They've abdicated coverage of a story that is negative to Kerry to the Blogosphere, thus resulting in more damage to their favored candidate than if they'd reported on the story, but with an eye toward knocking it down. They can pretend the story isn't there, but they can't make blogs go away.
Glenn adds:
...they're damaging themselves as more and more people notice that they're ignoring it.
Just so. Credibility, once lost, is difficult to re-establish. Ask Bill Clinton.
In April, I used the metaphor of a driver stuck in snow, who presses the accelerator, and finds the spinning wheels only melting more snow, making traction all the more difficult. The current efforts of the press to define Kerry’s lies as a non-event are destroying their own traction. The media eruption over far less serious charges about Bush’s National Guard service is too fresh in the recesses of most peoples’ minds. And, of course, Bush didn’t choose to run for re-election on the basis of his honorable, even brave service as a jet jockey, a highly dangerous occupation.
But it is summer now. So let me switch metaphors. The establishment press is facing its Gottedamerung – the twilight of the gods. For decades, god-like figures handed down their version of the truth from corporate Valhallas like the New York Times and CBS News. The public credulously accepted their writ on what is important and what is not important.
But god-like pretensions are dangerous, indeed, often fatal. Especially when combined with mono-maniacal convictions on the need for their point of view to prevail. Post-modernity, a concept beloved of the bien pensants, cuts two ways. The public is skeptical of anyone who pretends to be an authoritative gatekeeper of knowledge. Kerry, who has never cut much of a figure as a genuine, warm, empathetic human being, is an ideal target for citizen skepticism.
The establishment press is coming across as every bit as pompous and conniving as the man who married two centi-millionaire heiresses.
They are, in fact, destroying themselves. Their industry is in serious trouble. Circulation scandals have hit major newspaper publishers, while the scandal-free press can take little comfort in their declining readership. Network TV news is a shadow of its former self, and its future is very limited. CNN’s monopoly is shattered, and it boasts a poor fraction of the viewership of Fox News, the only cable news outlet fully covering Kerrygate with the same seriousness accorded Bush’s National Guard service questions.
The blogosphere is the camel whose nose, and now a good part of its neck, is under the tent. Leadership in coverage of the self-destruction of the Kerry Campaign is in the hands of Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt (guru to many of us), Powerline, Captain’s Quarters, Just One Minute, and many other bloggers.
Nobody had ever heard of Bob Woodward until Watergate. Afterward, he became a powerful brand name, and his and Bernstein's work inspired generations of new journalists. The same phenomenon is taking place today, and journalism will never be the same again. The big difference is that this time around, there is a technological revolution compounding the destructive force operating on the old media. Hurricane Charley has nothing on the winds of change now blowing away the old media practices and economics.
Future historians are going to find this election deeply significant for not just War on Terror policy reasons. This is a transformative election for the structure of political information.
Thomas Lifson
Twilight of the press gods
The genie is out of the bottle. The best efforts of the mainstream media to blockade the story of Kerry’s lies about Cambodia, and the charges by the vast majority of men who served with him in the Swift Boat operations, have failed. Glenn Reynolds prints a telling letter from a reader who requests anonymity. Read the entire entry, but here are the key sentences:
...last night I was talking to a friend who is a hardcore liberal Democrat and is, in fact, a first cousin of a very well-known Democratic Senator. He was very upset about the Kerry-Swift Vet-Cambodia controversy. He blamed Kerry for the whole thing, saying he had set himself up for this problem by making Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. Two things struck me about this. First, this is a guy who gets all of his news from the biggies - the NYT, NPR, and CNN - and yet he knew all about the story. That means the Big Media filter isn't preventing the story from reaching people. Second, he had concluded that Kerry deserves the criticism and is lacking in credibility. This is a guy who, if there were any yes-but talking points in defense of Kerry, surely would have stuck to them. This says to me that if Big Media is in the tank for Kerry, they may actually have hurt him by not covering this story. They've abdicated coverage of a story that is negative to Kerry to the Blogosphere, thus resulting in more damage to their favored candidate than if they'd reported on the story, but with an eye toward knocking it down. They can pretend the story isn't there, but they can't make blogs go away.
Glenn adds:
...they're damaging themselves as more and more people notice that they're ignoring it.
Just so. Credibility, once lost, is difficult to re-establish. Ask Bill Clinton.
In April, I used the metaphor of a driver stuck in snow, who presses the accelerator, and finds the spinning wheels only melting more snow, making traction all the more difficult. The current efforts of the press to define Kerry’s lies as a non-event are destroying their own traction. The media eruption over far less serious charges about Bush’s National Guard service is too fresh in the recesses of most peoples’ minds. And, of course, Bush didn’t choose to run for re-election on the basis of his honorable, even brave service as a jet jockey, a highly dangerous occupation.
But it is summer now. So let me switch metaphors. The establishment press is facing its Gottedamerung – the twilight of the gods. For decades, god-like figures handed down their version of the truth from corporate Valhallas like the New York Times and CBS News. The public credulously accepted their writ on what is important and what is not important.
But god-like pretensions are dangerous, indeed, often fatal. Especially when combined with mono-maniacal convictions on the need for their point of view to prevail. Post-modernity, a concept beloved of the bien pensants, cuts two ways. The public is skeptical of anyone who pretends to be an authoritative gatekeeper of knowledge. Kerry, who has never cut much of a figure as a genuine, warm, empathetic human being, is an ideal target for citizen skepticism.
The establishment press is coming across as every bit as pompous and conniving as the man who married two centi-millionaire heiresses.
They are, in fact, destroying themselves. Their industry is in serious trouble. Circulation scandals have hit major newspaper publishers, while the scandal-free press can take little comfort in their declining readership. Network TV news is a shadow of its former self, and its future is very limited. CNN’s monopoly is shattered, and it boasts a poor fraction of the viewership of Fox News, the only cable news outlet fully covering Kerrygate with the same seriousness accorded Bush’s National Guard service questions.
The blogosphere is the camel whose nose, and now a good part of its neck, is under the tent. Leadership in coverage of the self-destruction of the Kerry Campaign is in the hands of Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt (guru to many of us), Powerline, Captain’s Quarters, Just One Minute, and many other bloggers.
Nobody had ever heard of Bob Woodward until Watergate. Afterward, he became a powerful brand name, and his and Bernstein's work inspired generations of new journalists. The same phenomenon is taking place today, and journalism will never be the same again. The big difference is that this time around, there is a technological revolution compounding the destructive force operating on the old media. Hurricane Charley has nothing on the winds of change now blowing away the old media practices and economics.
Future historians are going to find this election deeply significant for not just War on Terror policy reasons. This is a transformative election for the structure of political information.
Thomas Lifson
From The Chicago Sun-Times:
Democrats peddle their own unique truth
By Mark Steyn
"My truth is that I am a gay American,'' announced Gov. James McGreevey to the people of New Jersey last Thursday.
That's such an exquisitely contemporary formulation: ''my'' truth. Once upon a time, there was only ''the'' truth. Now everyone gets his own -- or, as the governor put it, ''One has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world.'' For Jim McGreevey, his truth is that he's a gay American; for others in the Garden State, the truth about McGreevey is that he's a corrupt sexual harasser who put his lover on the state payroll in a critical homeland security post, and whose I-am-what-I-am confessional is a tactical feint that distracts the media sob sisters from the fact that, as his final service to the Democratic Party, he's resigned in such a way as to deny the people an early vote on his successor.
We'll see whose truth prevails in the fullness of time.
In politics, it's helpful if whatever ''unique truth'' the consultants have run past the focus groups bears at least a passing relationship to the real, actual truth -- not the whole truth, but at least a grain of it. That was what was so ingenious about Bill Clinton's ''60 Minutes'' appearance in 1992. He didn't come clean -- he was, as usual, full of it -- but he set in motion his designated ''unique truth'' -- flawed but human. It was designed to get him past Gennifer, but it wound up also getting him past Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita. . . . Whatever goods you got on him, it fit ''his truth'' as he sold it to us on CBS that day. As his attorney Cheryl Mills put it during the impeachment trial, Bill Clinton, along with Jefferson, Kennedy and Martin Luther King, ''made human errors, but they struggled to do humanity good . . .''
Which brings us to John Kerry. What is his unique truth? In 1986, on the floor of the United States Senate, he said:
''I remember Christmas of 1968, sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory, which is seared -- seared -- in me.''
Though the seared senator peddled this searing memory for a quarter-century, it had evidently been seared into him pretty haphazardly. It turns out at Christmas 1968 he wasn't in Cambodia but was instead 55 miles away at Sa Dec, South Vietnam. So the Kerry campaign's begun riffling hurriedly through its Sears Rowback catalog for more or less watertight back-pedaling of the story: They now say that ''many times he was on or near the Cambodian border,'' which is true in the sense that 80 percent of Canadians live on or near the American border. But most folks in Vancouver don't claim to be living in the Greater Seattle area.
Earlier, senior Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan told ABC News: ''The Mekong Delta consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol ... in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam.'' For a crowd of ostentatious multilateralists, they can't seem to hold the map the right way up: The Mekong River isn't the border between Cambodia and Vietnam; it cuts through the heart of Cambodia and then runs through Vietnam to the sea.
But this question isn't about geographical degrees of latitude so much as psychological ones. Here's the real reason Lt. Kerry wasn't spending Dec. 24, 1968, on a secret mission in Cambodia: On the previous day, Dec. 23, the U.S. government finally secured the release, after a five-month diplomatic stand-off, of 11 Americans whose U.S. Army utility landing craft had made a navigational error and strayed into Cambodian waters. Prince Sihanouk had rejected U.S. apologies and threatened to try the men under Cambodian law. It's unlikely, 24 hours after their release, anyone in Washington was thinking, ''Hey, we need to send that hotshot Kerry in there.''
So what are we to make of Sen. Kerry's self-seared 30-year-old false memory of Christmas in Cambodia with its vast accumulation of precise details? Of being shot at by the Khmer Rouge (unlikely in 1968) and of South Vietnamese troops drunkenly celebrating Christmas (as only devout Buddhists know how)?
It's not about dates and places. For Kerry, his Yuletide mission was an epiphany: the moment when he realized his government was lying to the people about what was going on. This is the turning point, the moment that set the young Kerry on the path from brave young war volunteer to fierce anti-war activist.
And it turns out it's total bunk.
Thirty-five years on, having no appealing campaign themes, the senator decides to run for president on his biography. But for the last 20 years he's been a legislative non-entity. Before that, he was accusing his brave band of brothers of mutilation, rape and torture. He spent his early life at Swiss finishing school and his later life living off his wife's inheritance from her first husband. So, biography-wise, that leaves four months in Vietnam, which he talks about non-stop. That 1986 Senate speech is typical: It was supposed to be about Reagan policy in Central America, but like so many Kerry speeches and interviews somehow it winds up with yet another self-aggrandizing trip down memory lane.
A handful of Kerry's ''band of brothers'' are traveling around with his campaign. Most of the rest, including a majority of his fellow swift boat commanders and 254 swiftees from Kerry's Coastal Squadron One, are opposed to his candidacy. That is an amazing ratio and, if snot-nosed American media grandees don't think there's a story there, maybe they ought to consider another line of work. To put it in terms they can understand, imagine if Dick Cheney campaigned for the presidency on the basis of his time at Halliburton, and a majority of the Halliburton board and 80 percent of the stockholders declared he was unfit for office. More to the point, on the swift vets' first major allegation -- Christmas in Cambodia -- the Kerry campaign has caved.
Who is John Kerry? What is his ''unique truth?'' Consider this vignette from New Hampshire primary season as retailed in a recent 8,000-word yawneroo puff piece in the New Yorker:
'' 'He'll often thrash around in the night,' the filmmaker George Butler, who is one of Kerry's oldest friends, told me. 'He smashed up a lamp in my house in New Hampshire, in the bedroom where he was staying. Most Vietnam veterans go through this.'''
''Most?'' Whether or not John Kerry ever entered Cambodia, he seems unable, psychologically, to exit it.
Democrats peddle their own unique truth
By Mark Steyn
"My truth is that I am a gay American,'' announced Gov. James McGreevey to the people of New Jersey last Thursday.
That's such an exquisitely contemporary formulation: ''my'' truth. Once upon a time, there was only ''the'' truth. Now everyone gets his own -- or, as the governor put it, ''One has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world.'' For Jim McGreevey, his truth is that he's a gay American; for others in the Garden State, the truth about McGreevey is that he's a corrupt sexual harasser who put his lover on the state payroll in a critical homeland security post, and whose I-am-what-I-am confessional is a tactical feint that distracts the media sob sisters from the fact that, as his final service to the Democratic Party, he's resigned in such a way as to deny the people an early vote on his successor.
We'll see whose truth prevails in the fullness of time.
In politics, it's helpful if whatever ''unique truth'' the consultants have run past the focus groups bears at least a passing relationship to the real, actual truth -- not the whole truth, but at least a grain of it. That was what was so ingenious about Bill Clinton's ''60 Minutes'' appearance in 1992. He didn't come clean -- he was, as usual, full of it -- but he set in motion his designated ''unique truth'' -- flawed but human. It was designed to get him past Gennifer, but it wound up also getting him past Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita. . . . Whatever goods you got on him, it fit ''his truth'' as he sold it to us on CBS that day. As his attorney Cheryl Mills put it during the impeachment trial, Bill Clinton, along with Jefferson, Kennedy and Martin Luther King, ''made human errors, but they struggled to do humanity good . . .''
Which brings us to John Kerry. What is his unique truth? In 1986, on the floor of the United States Senate, he said:
''I remember Christmas of 1968, sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory, which is seared -- seared -- in me.''
Though the seared senator peddled this searing memory for a quarter-century, it had evidently been seared into him pretty haphazardly. It turns out at Christmas 1968 he wasn't in Cambodia but was instead 55 miles away at Sa Dec, South Vietnam. So the Kerry campaign's begun riffling hurriedly through its Sears Rowback catalog for more or less watertight back-pedaling of the story: They now say that ''many times he was on or near the Cambodian border,'' which is true in the sense that 80 percent of Canadians live on or near the American border. But most folks in Vancouver don't claim to be living in the Greater Seattle area.
Earlier, senior Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan told ABC News: ''The Mekong Delta consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol ... in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam.'' For a crowd of ostentatious multilateralists, they can't seem to hold the map the right way up: The Mekong River isn't the border between Cambodia and Vietnam; it cuts through the heart of Cambodia and then runs through Vietnam to the sea.
But this question isn't about geographical degrees of latitude so much as psychological ones. Here's the real reason Lt. Kerry wasn't spending Dec. 24, 1968, on a secret mission in Cambodia: On the previous day, Dec. 23, the U.S. government finally secured the release, after a five-month diplomatic stand-off, of 11 Americans whose U.S. Army utility landing craft had made a navigational error and strayed into Cambodian waters. Prince Sihanouk had rejected U.S. apologies and threatened to try the men under Cambodian law. It's unlikely, 24 hours after their release, anyone in Washington was thinking, ''Hey, we need to send that hotshot Kerry in there.''
So what are we to make of Sen. Kerry's self-seared 30-year-old false memory of Christmas in Cambodia with its vast accumulation of precise details? Of being shot at by the Khmer Rouge (unlikely in 1968) and of South Vietnamese troops drunkenly celebrating Christmas (as only devout Buddhists know how)?
It's not about dates and places. For Kerry, his Yuletide mission was an epiphany: the moment when he realized his government was lying to the people about what was going on. This is the turning point, the moment that set the young Kerry on the path from brave young war volunteer to fierce anti-war activist.
And it turns out it's total bunk.
Thirty-five years on, having no appealing campaign themes, the senator decides to run for president on his biography. But for the last 20 years he's been a legislative non-entity. Before that, he was accusing his brave band of brothers of mutilation, rape and torture. He spent his early life at Swiss finishing school and his later life living off his wife's inheritance from her first husband. So, biography-wise, that leaves four months in Vietnam, which he talks about non-stop. That 1986 Senate speech is typical: It was supposed to be about Reagan policy in Central America, but like so many Kerry speeches and interviews somehow it winds up with yet another self-aggrandizing trip down memory lane.
A handful of Kerry's ''band of brothers'' are traveling around with his campaign. Most of the rest, including a majority of his fellow swift boat commanders and 254 swiftees from Kerry's Coastal Squadron One, are opposed to his candidacy. That is an amazing ratio and, if snot-nosed American media grandees don't think there's a story there, maybe they ought to consider another line of work. To put it in terms they can understand, imagine if Dick Cheney campaigned for the presidency on the basis of his time at Halliburton, and a majority of the Halliburton board and 80 percent of the stockholders declared he was unfit for office. More to the point, on the swift vets' first major allegation -- Christmas in Cambodia -- the Kerry campaign has caved.
Who is John Kerry? What is his ''unique truth?'' Consider this vignette from New Hampshire primary season as retailed in a recent 8,000-word yawneroo puff piece in the New Yorker:
'' 'He'll often thrash around in the night,' the filmmaker George Butler, who is one of Kerry's oldest friends, told me. 'He smashed up a lamp in my house in New Hampshire, in the bedroom where he was staying. Most Vietnam veterans go through this.'''
''Most?'' Whether or not John Kerry ever entered Cambodia, he seems unable, psychologically, to exit it.
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