RANDOM MEMO: POLITICS

politics>

THE FICTITIOUS WAR
3.28.03
Memo Meños

While I do not share the fervor with which MICHAEL MOORE denounced President BUSH on the war in Iraq, there are some items which I have trouble getting me mind around:

1. Prime Minister TONY BLAIR in his comments at the joint press conference today cited as one of the justifications for the war, the 400,000 Iraqi children that die each year of malnutrition. Yet, the US funds world hunger organizations, primarily the United Nations to the tune of about $1billion annually. That amount is about half of those organizations budgets. So if we were sincere about saving starving children, why not take the $75 billion and all the manpower over the next 6 months and stop starvation. Period.

2. The polls that Republicans and the Fox News Channel cite ad nauseum about the American public approving the war all seem to indicate overwhelming support for the effort. Some show approval as high as 77% for the President. Why then are there hundreds of thousands of demonstrators taking to the streets against the war?
It would seem to me that 250,00 people who go to the trouble of clogging the streets of Manhattan or San Francisco or Miami, or wherever, USA, are a better indicator of the support, or lack thereof, than 500 random people answering questions over the telephone in the comfort of their living room.

3 Secretary of Defense DONALD RUMSFELD and the others involved with the war gave a pretty clear indication that the "shock and awe" battle plan was going to leave SADDAM and his forces dumbfounded, such that it was possible the war would last "days, not weeks." In the days since the war started, with SADDAM apparently not so shocked, officials have been striving to downplay expectations, to the point that yesterday RUMSFELD estimated "weeks, not months" for the war’s duration. But when asked today in the press conference President BUSH would only say "as long as it takes", and behind the scenes Defense Department officials are said to be saying it could go months.

4. What is all the hype about the DIXIE CHICKS? NATALIE MAINES said some stuff onstage in concert in London. The crowd there roared its approval. Are we to believe that people here aren’t buying their cd because of it? Come on. The cd has already sold 5 million copies. Sales are down, but that’s probably because the spike the cd got from the Grammy Awards, in January, hello, is wearing off. Besides, if public perception of a singer reflects negatively on record sales how do you account for 50 CENT or R. KELLY selling more than the DIXIE CHICKS, I would think the conservative record buying public would be more swayed by a former drug dealer or an alleged child molester, than someone exercising their right to free speech and bad humor during a performance.

5. Former Senator GEORGE McGOVERN speaking to students in Wyoming pulled no punches about how President BUSH had "misled" the American public about the dangers of SADDAM HUSSEIN, saying he had "not so much as stuck his big toe beyond the borders of Iraq" since the last Gulf War. It does defy logic how anyone could say that Iraq was a threat to the lives of Americans, at least, before last Wednesday anyway.