WOW! Six (!) Chicago Trib Op Ed pieces today critical of Bush/Iraq

[xray s]

For a minute there I though I was reading a print copy of DU. The right wing Tribune seems to be having some pangs of regret that they supported Bush...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/
(Registration required)

MEASURING THE PRESIDENT
legacy

What will history say about Bush?

By Charles W. Murdock
professor at Loyola University School of Law
Published August 14, 2005

A colleague recently reminded me that, after the 2004 election, I had remarked that President Bush will go down in history either as one of our greatest presidents or one of the worst. He asked whether I still held that somewhat paradoxical view. My response was that events could tip the story either way, but they now seem to be working against the president....

PREDICTION
Forces of politics, not warfare, will bring Iraq pullout by 2006

By E.W. Chamberlain III., E.W. Chamberlain III is a retired Army colonel
Published August 14, 2005


Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rightly states that we need an Iraqi army to defeat the insurgency, and President Bush says it is not yet up to par, so it could be a while before we're out of there.

The president asks us to be patient and stay the course, and that a pullout may take years.

I'll tell you when we'll be out of Iraq.

We will be out of Iraq before the congressional election of 2006. We'll either be completely out or well on our way out with a specified end date.

Here's why.

The toll of the war in both lives and treasure are going well beyond what we were promised. The elections in Iraq already are proving themselves to have been merely a vote of the majority for the majority with no room for any meaningful minority voice in the emerging government...

IRAQ FALLOUT
Deconstructing the war talk as stubborn Bush stays course

By Dennis Jett, dean of the University of Florida International Center and a former U.S. ambassador to Peru and Mozambique
Published August 14, 2005


Nearly half the American people have figured out something that President Bush cannot admit: The war in Iraq is hurting, not helping, the war on terrorism.

According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 47 percent of Americans have come to that realization. Only 39 percent of those surveyed believe it is helping, and their numbers are steadily falling.

A better understanding of the impact of the war can be found in the comics than in some parts of Washington. In a recent "Doonesbury," journalist Roland Hedley asks a hooded jihadist whether he would concede that by fighting in Iraq, Americans would not have to fight the terrorists on our own streets. The terrorist responds "the war in Iraq is such a godsend for us. It's the greatest recruiting tool in the history of terrorism."...

EVOLUTION OF COMBAT
A new kind of fight changes battle lines

By Leon Daniel, a retired foreign correspondent and editor for United Press International
Published August 14, 2005


The newspaper headshots and thumbnail sketches of our dead in Iraq and Afghanistan disclose that too many of them were teenagers who looked for all the world like the boy or girl next door.

So many of them were 19, the age more-fortunate young Americans begin college. I pay particular attention to the impossibly young faces of the Marines, perhaps because I enlisted in the Corps at age 19 and became a rifle squad leader in the Korean War...

One of the bitter ironies of our current wars is that among their most vocal cheerleaders are men who dodged the one in Vietnam. Some of these war wimps (Vice President Dick Cheney for one) hid behind student deferments, others claimed an "owee knee." Our commander in chief ducked combat by joining the Alabama National Guard.

The president's hell for leather rush to war has dangerously limited our nation's armed forces, which are stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq. Multiple tours of duty and extremely heavy reliance on the reserves and national guards have damaged morale. In a few cases, senior citizens have been recalled for duty.

Clarence Page
Mr. President, can we talk about the war too?
Cindy Sheehan's vigil raises uncomfortable questions for Bush

Published August 14, 2005


WASHINGTON -- I sympathize with Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who wants to talk to President Bush about her son Casey, who was killed in Iraq. I also sympathize with President Bush. It can't be easy to look as confident as he usually does while he's trying to get his country out of a bigger mess than he expected to get it into.

It is August, normally a no-news time in which the president can roll up his shirtsleeves and clear brush around his Crawford, Texas, ranch while news cameras click and roll and his approval ratings soar. It is interesting how presidential approvals tend to ascend in August, regardless of which party happens to be in power. The American people, in accord with Thomas Jefferson, seem to appreciate government the most when it is governing the least.

But Mrs. Sheehan isn't having that. The Vacaville, Calif., mom threw a big clod into Bush's butter churn. She set up camp with other war protesters outside the president's ranch on Aug. 6 and vowed to keep her vigil until Bush meets with her and other Gold Star mothers to explain why their children had to die in Iraq and to hear her argument for quickly ending the war....

FINE POINT
Bush using own rules with Roberts
Through an executive order, the White House is controlling which documents about the Supreme Court nominee will be made public

By Michael Tackett
Tribune Washington Bureau chief
Published August 14, 2005


There are plenty of reasons to be ticked at President Bush this summer: a war in Iraq with no clear prospect of an end; a halting economy with only limited signs of recovery; gasoline prices that rapidly empty wallets at the pump.

But those issues are also so complicated that blame can't really be laid at a single doorstep, not even the president's.So take a look instead at an action for which the president is solely responsible, namely Executive Order 13223 that Bush signed Nov. 1, 2001. The order empowered the president to control the release of a former president's records even if the former president wanted the records to be open to the public....

The immediate effect of the order was to limit access to records of Reagan administration officials who were called upon to serve in the Bush administration, shielding them and the president from any potentially embarrassing disclosures. Read another way, it also shielded the public and the Senate (which might be called upon to confirm a presidential appointee) from having the full picture of a nominee's background. It now seems to have been precisely the president's intent. The White House is refusing to release all the documents related to the government service of Bush's first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, federal Appeals Judge John Roberts.

[stepnw1f]

1. See This Freepers?

Your dynasty of fiction has ended. Slowly you will implode. The truth has a way of doing that to liers.

PEACE

[Inland]

2. A barrage from the historically republican organ, the Tribune.

And I mean, on board with Lincoln as a republican paper.

[Rich Hunt]

13. it pre-dates that, actually

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tribune

Founded in 1847, the Tribune published its first edition on June 10, as a Know Nothing paper. It consisted mostly of columns that were xenophobic, with constant foreigner and Roman Catholic bashing. The xenophobia was toned down, but the paper began promoting temperance. Eight years later when "Long" John Wentworth entered his second term as mayor of Chicago, he sold The Chicago Democrat to Joseph Medill and five partners. Before and during the American Civil War, Joseph Medill pushed an abolitionist agenda and strongly supported Abraham Lincoln, whom he persuaded to run for the Presidency in 1860. The paper remained a strong force in Republican politics for years afterwards. Medill served as mayor of Chicago for one term after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Under the 20th century editorship of Col. Robert R. McCormick the paper was strongly isolationist and actively biased in its coverage of political news and social trends, calling itself "The American Paper for Americans," excoriating the Democrats and the New Deal, resolutely disdainful of the British and French, and greatly enthusiastic for Chiang Kai-shek and Sen. Joseph McCarthy. McCormick died in 1955, just four days before Richard J. Daley was elected mayor for the first time.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. As I read through it, I had to check the front section a few times

to make sure I had the right paper.

wow.

Of course, the editorial they wrote supporting bush for re-election really burned them a new one (think of eating raw habanero peppers for three days, then sitting on the - never mind)

But a lot of people voted with their feet and dropped the Trib. I only came back for weekends under force of threat from my honey.

The point was made, though, and even many conservatives are looking at a trillion dollar budget shortfall, games with budgets (hiding Iraq's costs? where do you hide it?) the Social Security fiasco, the environmental problems (5 months of drought and heat here) and absolutely no logic or rationale for Iraq.

The other paper (Chi Sun) is getting many pro-peace, anti-bush letters and have problems finding an equal number to print. I suspect that the ChiTrib is seeing the same wave of discontent. But being TribCorp, probably to a lesser degree.
Frankly, I think the threats about Iran are the last straw. The conservatives are recognizing who the enemy is - George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their aiders and abettors.

[geckosfeet]

11. Time to work at keeping the ball rolling! nt

[Eloriel]

4. Nominated, fer shre!!

(What's wrong with the Editorials readers, anyway? They seem not to have Nominate buttons or something. :evilgrin: )

GREAT news. I think Frank Rich has it right in his column: someone needs to tell Bush the war is over.

[Demeter]

5. Buyer's Remorse

How sweet it is, in a very bitter way.

[justgamma]

6. This statement drives me nuts!!

"The elections in Iraq already are proving themselves to have been merely a vote of the majority for the majority with no room for any meaningful minority voice in the emerging government..."

Do they not see that this is what's happening in our very own country?

[Miss Chybil]

8. No, in our country it's the opposite.

It doesn't matter if more people vote for a certain person. The winner is picked by an elite minority - 9 people who wear funny robes.

[Kurovski]

7. Nominated

as much for my lifelong love/hate relationship with my hometown paper as anything else.

[Fly by night]

9. Maybe they'll get around to running Bob Koehler's election theft columns.

By my count, he has written at least four, none of which the Tribune has published yet.

Hey, Trib editors, maybe the reason Duh-bya is so unpopular right now is that the son-of-a-bitch was never elected in the first place. Not in 2000, not in 2004.

Why don't you ask Bob K. for a copy of his columns -- I'm sure his attitude will be the same as ours -- better late than never.

[BamaBecky]

10. Amazing!....n/t

[0007]

12. The gathering storms against junior is just beginning.....

it won't be pretty this time next year.