Glenn Blech! - Democratic Underground

NanceGreggs

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Sep-14-07 12:27 PM
Original message

Glenn Blech!

Well, hello, Beck. Let me ask you a question or two.

Re your comment: “From the day that American troops were sent in to fight in Iraq, didn’t we promise each other? Didn’t we promise each other one thing that we wouldn’t treat these veterans like the way we treated the ones from Vietnam? That we’d support their efforts and never call them murderers and baby killers? Wasn’t that what we promised each other?”

Funny thing is I’ve never heard anyone refer to our troops in Iraq as baby killers – except you. I also find it laughable that any right-wing hack would even want to bring up the topic of how we treat our veterans, in light of the treatment they’ve received from this president and his party.

If you really support the troops beyond tossing that soundbyte around as though it means something, you might alert your audience to the fact that when our vets come home wounded and/or disabled, their government gets busy finding ways to deny treatment and the pensions that are their due.

Oh, and there are, of course, more wounded vets than there should be, thanks to this administration not supplying proper body armor and other life-saving equipment. Apparently, the president had to choose between equipping our soldiers and ensuring Halliburton’s obscene profits – and guess who wound up on the losing end of that exercise?

“To some, our troops are now officially baby killers. Here’s how I got there.

If activists like MoveOn.org will dare to come after a respected man like General Petraeus, a man with impeccable reputation, who was approved without objection by the entire Congress, I wondered who would cast the next stone. How fast would this thing start rolling down the hill?”

Hmm, so that’s how you got there …

If Petraeus is a man with an impeccable reputation, one wonders why he is so willing to play fast and loose with the facts. But no one should question his integrity, because that’s tantamount to calling everyone in uniform a baby-killer, right? Right!

“During his Middle Eastern tour last week, Democrat Dennis Kucinich met with the president of Syria. Here is what he had to say: ‘We are all being weakened by continuing a war that’s based on a lie. This war was based on lies. Iraq didn’t have the weapons of mass destruction, wasn’t connected to 9/11, had nothing to do with al Qaeda’s role in 9/11.”

Could you kindly point out for me exactly what was untrue in that statement? Or is your point simply that he shouldn’t be speaking to Syria? Maybe you’re right, Beck. Maybe no American should get friendly with nations that might be ‘harbouring terrorists’ – like Saudi Arabia, for example, homeland of the majority of the 9-11 hijackers. Maybe you should point that out to your president.

“Brian De Palma, he’s a director out of Hollywood. He’s got a new film coming out this fall about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers.
I want you to understand: this did happen.

But it is unfair and completely irresponsible to color all American troops as rapists. Maybe being called a baby killer wasn`t so bad after all.”

Huh? De Palma makes a film based on an actual event, and that equates to coloring all American troops as rapists? Sorry, Beck – I’d need a roadmap of the alternate universe you apparently live in to figure out how you got there. And thanks for the head’s-up on De Palma being a director out of Hollywood, as unnecessary as it was. You see, Beck, De Palma is famous around the world for his work. I guess you probably just can’t grasp that kind of celebrity.

“If you have a family member fighting overseas like I do, prepare yourself. The real atrocities of war are about to begin.”

Hate to have to correct you, Beck, but the real atrocities of war started the day Bush sent our soldiers into harm’s way based on lies, the day he chose to ignore the counsel of his military advisors who warned of exactly the pitfalls he has so consistently stepped in, the day he cut the pay and pensions of the troops, the day he decided that billions would be spent on contracts with war profiteers while soldiers went into combat without sufficient protective gear and vehicles – the list goes on and on.

As for disrespecting the troops, I can’t decide which act would be more disrespectful: a president looking under his desk for those WMDs he never found and laughing about it, or a man standing on an aircraft carrier making a speech in front of a Mission Accomplished banner, knowing he was about to send thousands of troops to their deaths in a war of his own contrivance.

If you want to call someone a baby-killer, Beck, I think that’s your guy.