beating a dead horse
I realize that’s what we’re doing at this point, but it’s tough to let quotes like these pass. More good news from Randy Kuhl about Iraq via WROC:
“Once you get through the
first martiniapprehension, it really isn’t bad. You can almost forget you’re in a war zone,” he says.(snip)
“When you fly over and you look down, we were 1,000 feet, and you see people in fields, farmers plowing fields, herding water buffalo’s. It’s life as usual.”
The new good news about Iraq: it doesn’t look that bad when you’re flying over it.
Randy’s full-on embrace of the Bush administration’s Iraqi fairy tale is particularly odd when the papers are full of articles like this one, which reports that many incumbents are in jeopardy because “The public has soured on politicians backing the Iraq war.”
Related posts:
Obviously Randy Kuhl kept his distance from military hospitals. I guess seeing injured, suffering, wounded, amputees would just ruin the Club Med illusion he is trying to get us to buy into.
Ah, the fly-over. Everything looks better from above. Just ask GW about his fly-over of New Orleans.
It’s pretty amazing that he can be this out of touch with reality. He makes Rumsfeld sound reasonble.
Not to be a geek, but his fly-over comment is like in Star Wars, where C-3PO and R2D2 are escaping in that pod from their destroyed ship, and he says “Funny, the damage doesn’t look so bad from out here.”
Kind of reminds me of the Colbert line about soaring like the Hindenburg
I think it is part of some script that Karl Rove came up with. Notice how Bush is always talking about “the violence you see on your t.v. screens” and the like. There’s some idea that if you can detach the public from the violence of the war, by making it something that only happens on television or thousands of feet below you, that it will increase support for the war.
Dead right… It’s the same reason why meat at the supermarket comes in clean, sanitized packages and the killing happens else where… we get pictures of explosions on the horizon, but Anderson Cooper doesn’t have graphic footage of people having legs amputated… gotta go to HBO for that. Neat little packages masking the true gore = happy consumers (culinary or media)… and happy consumers want more meat.
I so hope Kuhl loses this election. 60% of the people are against the war. I think it will be higher by November. Kuhl’s real position is “It’s not important if it’s not happening to me.” Not everyone is like that…
[...] I like the site Raw Story quite a bit, but they can be a bit sensationalist. They’re covering the Cheney-Kuhl fundraiser later this September and here’s the headline “Cheney to stump for GOPer who bullied wife with guns.” I’d rather it said “Cheney to stump for GOPer who says Iraq looks peaceful when you’re flying over”. Or how about “GOPer who shot friend to stump for Randy Kuhl”? [...]
[...] Kuhl: Even when someone is being tortured, it looks peaceful when you’re viewing it at 1000 feet. [...]
[...] Coburn has said some pretty crazy stuff over the years — crazier even than Kuhl’s comments about Iraq. For example, he once claimed that “The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power… That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today” and spoke of a town in Oklahoma where lesbianism was “so rampant in some of the schools…that they’ll let only one girl go to the bathroom.” [...]
[...] You can read more about Kuhl’s Iraq trip (here, here and here). [...]
[...] I was dissapointed they didn’t single out Kuhl’s idiotic comments about Iraq for dispproval, but they did scold Kuhl for his support for Medicare Part D: Kuhl has been a strong supporter of the Bush administration’s costly and flawed Medicare prescription drug plan, which caved in to pharmaceutical companies by disallowing the government to negotiate for lower prices. [...]
[...] Randy Kuhl is all over the map when it comes to the Iraq war. One day, he’s waxing rhapsodic about the peaceful Iraqi farmers tending their water buffalo, the next he’s screaming at a debate audience that there are people “who want to kill all of you”.ÂÂ Now, he’d have us believe he’s a sensible centrist, who questions the surge but knows we’ve all got to line up behind the Great Decider when times get tough.ÂÂ Here’s the latest: Rep. John R. “Randy†Kuhl Jr. on Thursday expressed concern for President Bush’s proposed surge of 21,500 U.S. troops into Baghdad. [...]