Roundup: Media's Take

October 1, 2004

Assembling Full War Records A Challenge

Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post, 30 Sept. 2004 Although both President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry have repeatedly said they have made public their complete military service records, neither presidential candidate has yet permitted independent access to original files held in a high-security vault. The lack of outside verification of the military personnel records of the candidates has made it more difficult for journalists and historians to evaluate their Vietnam War-era se

October 1, 2004

Best Arguer Generally Wins Debate

Olivia Ward, Toronto Star, 30 Sept. 2004 Go on the attack. Make your opponent angry. Use your authority, not your reason. And if all else fails, claim victory in the teeth of defeat. It's tried and true advice for U.S. presidential candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry, as they belly up to the cameras at University of Miami tonight for the first of three debates that may decide the fate of the country, and much of the world, for the next four years after the Nov. 2 election.

October 1, 2004

Underdogs In Election History

Peter S. Canellos, The Boston Globe, 30 Sept. 2004 Jimmy Carter grinned his way to victory over a gaffe-prone Gerald Ford, only to have Ronald Reagan take revenge in the next election, asking voters in a soon-to-unmistakable husky baritone,"Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Tonight, John F. Kerry joins the realm of challengers to presidents, called upon to establish their fitness on the field of debate, in what history shows is a would-be president's best chance

October 1, 2004

Psychological Consequences Of Killing: Past Wars Being Studied

Jane Lampman, Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), 29 Sept. 2004 One dark night in Iraq in February 1991, a U.S. Army tank unit opened fire on two trucks that barreled unexpectedly into its position along the Euphrates river. One was carrying fuel and burst into flames, and as men scattered from the burning trucks, the American soldiers shot them. "To this day, I don't know if they were civilians or military - it was over in an instant," says Desert Storm veteran Charles Sheeha

October 1, 2004

California's Complicated Racial Past Weighs On Present

Gregory Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times, 26 Sept. 2004 Once known as the land of futurists and dreamers, California is increasingly home to pessimists. Often nostalgic, newspaper commentators, novelists, journalists and social critics issue jeremiads about paradise lost and the coming dystopia. California has always had its share of apocalyptic prophets, but these voices are no longer cries in the wilderness; they reflect a growing public mood in the once Golden State. There is a r

October 1, 2004

Could Canada Be The First To Experience 'Military Bankruptcy?'

Richard Foot, The Gazette (Montreal), 26 Sept. 2004"Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight. But Roaring Bill, who killed him, thought it right." - Hilaire Belloc Inside the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill, among books bearing the names of more than 115,000 Canadians killed overseas on military service, a solemn epitaph declares:"War has not spared our people." The words are a testament not to a bellicose nation, but to Canada's record of courage and fortitude in the face of

October 1, 2004

The Use Of Gestures By U.S. Presidential Candidates

Moni Asu, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 26 Sept. 2004 Call it the body politic. How you say something matters as much as what you say. President Bush winks and smiles and is known for sidelong glances. Sen. John Kerry clenches his fists and points his index finger. Sen. John Edwards does the arms-stretched-to-the side, two-thumbs-up move. And Vice President Dick Cheney, well, body language experts agree he could use a little more motion. Salutes, waves, clasped hands,

October 1, 2004

President Bush's Time In The National Guard

James Rainey, Stephen Braun and Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times, 27 Sept. 2004 On a temperate, crystal-clear Texas day in April 1972, Lt. George W. Bush took what turned out to be his last flight as a National Guard pilot. Over the next 18 months of his tour, the man who is now America's commander in chief paid little attention to his military duties, lost his flying status and was granted an early exit from the assignment that shielded him from combat in Vietnam. A r

October 1, 2004

Hama's Past Explored In Analyzing Present Crisis In Israel

Laura King, Los Angeles Times, 27 Sept. 2004 Only weeks after Israel publicly threatened to take its war with the Islamic militant group Hamas onto Syrian soil, a Hamas official in Damascus was killed Sunday when a powerful explosion tore through his sport utility vehicle. Israeli officials disavowed knowledge of the blast that killed 42-year-old Izzedine Sheik Khalil, who had lived in the Syrian capital for the last 13 years and was reportedly a member of the group's military w

October 1, 2004

An Analysis In Favor Of The U.S. Remaining In Iraq

William Rees-Mogg, The Times (London), 27 Sept. 27 Iraq lies on a political and economic faultline that the world cannot afford to ignore. IN THE 1960s Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein was invited to address the Staff College on the principles of strategy. In the middle of the Vietnam war, he opened with the words:"Gentlemen, there are two principles of strategy. The first is 'Never march on Moscow'. The second is 'Never fight a ground war in south-east Asia'." We mu

October 1, 2004

Land-Use Decisions In American West Largely Favor Energy Industry

Joby Warick and Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post, 25 Sept. 2004 The last sanctuary of the West Douglas wild horse herd is a desolate, forbidding place, which is just how the horses like it. As many as 60 skittish sorrels and bays make their home on the steeper slopes and stony ridges north of here, abandoning the valleys to growing throngs of oil and gas men looking for places to drill. Now, even this refuge may soon be lost. The U.S. Interior Department, which has leased

October 1, 2004

Rebecca Solnit: Thoreau's Lessons for Today

Rebecca Solnit, in www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, run by Tom Engelhardt (Sept. 28, 2004):[The New York Times said that in River of Shadows, Rebecca Solnit's next-to-last book, "an extraordinary mind seizes hold of an unexpected topic and renders it with such confidence, subtlety and grace that one finds it hard to remember what things looked like before the book appeared in the

September 30, 2004

David Brooks: Salvadorans Went to the Polls During a Civil War, So . . .

David Brooks, in the NYT (Sept. 28, 2004):Conditions were horrible when Salvadorans went to the polls on March 28, 1982. The country was in the midst of a civil war that would take 75,000 lives. An insurgent army controlled about a third of the nation's territory. Just before election day, the insurgents stepped up their terror campaign. They attacked the Nation

September 29, 2004

WSJ: Black Voters Were Not Harassed in Flordia in 2000

Editorial in the WSJ (Sept. 28, 2004):In case you were lucky enough to miss it, here's a recent fund-raising letter from New Jersey Democratic Senator Jon Corzine: "Voter suppression and intimidation . . . in Florida again!? The GOP used voter intimidation and outright fraud to hand Florida to George W. Bush in 2000, and if we don't stop them, they'll do it again."Yes, the poli

September 28, 2004

Ethan Rarick: Attention Given to CBS vs. NYT's Mistakes Confirms Absence of Liberal Media Bias

Ethan Rarick, in the San Francisco Chronicle (September 27, 2004): [Ethan Rarick is a visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.] If ever a story should destroy the myth of liberal media bias, it is the flap over Dan Rather's flub. For CBS, the admission that it cannot verify the authenticity of documents used in a story about President Bus

September 27, 2004

Naomi Wolfe: Repubs Are Appealing to Swing Women Voters and Dems Aren't

Naomi Wolfe, in NY Magazine (Sept. 27, 2004):... The true genius behind the Bush success is not Karl Rove; she's a suburban working mom in sensible shoes. It was clear from the start that Team Bush realized that the old, white, male face of the Republican Party was a recipe for losing those crucial suburban women in the swing states who are socially progressive and fiscally conservative. As l

September 24, 2004

Boston Globe: About Bush's Statement that 20 Presidents Have Served in the National Guard

Lisa Daniel, in he Boston Globe (Sept. 24, 2004): Harry S. Truman was in no position to fight when Congress declared war on Germany in 1917. He was 33 and had been out of the National Guard for six years. His vision was terrible, and he needed to keep his family farm afloat to support his sister and widowed mother. Yet Truman reenlisted in Missouri's National Guard and volunteered for overseas deployment. He was given command of a field artillery unit that arrived i

September 24, 2004

Iraq isn't Vietnam, it's Guadalcanal

Powl Smith, in the Weekly Standard (Sept. 24, 2004):[Lieutenant Colonel Powl Smith, U.S. Army, is the former chief of counterterrorism plans at U.S. European Command and is currently in Baghdad with Multi-National Forces-Iraq.] ... People love to draw historical analogies because they seem to offer a sort of analytical proof--after all, doesn't history repeat itself?

September 24, 2004

The CIA's New Mission In Light Of Its Past

John Diamond, USA TODAY, 22 Sept. 2004 WASHINGTON - Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA is still five years away from fielding the network of spies and spymasters it will need to defeat global terrorists. That's not the charge of one of the CIA's growing legion of critics; that's the agency's own grim estimate. The assessment, given to the 9/11 Commission in testimony last spring by then-CIA director George Tenet, was"one of the most appalling comments we heard" in t

September 24, 2004

Zell Miller, Race-Baiting, and Southern Politics

Cynthia Tucker, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 22 Sept. 2004 Zell Miller wants you to believe that he is dispensing a dose of discipline to his beloved Democratic Party --- pointing out the foibles and foolishness that have led to its loss of the South. Miller claims he only wants the Democrats to regain their traditional values before it's too late. Miller is a hypocrite. As a historian, he knows exactly why the Democratic Party is teetering in the South: It's precisely beca