Mainstream Media – Still the Five Hundred Pound Gorilla

President Bush gave a very well thought out, very persuasive speech at the US Naval Academy yesterday. It was chock full of excellent points laying out the rationale, strategy, ample evidence and very good reasons why the United States went into Iraq to fight international terrorism. It also contained numerous examples of success in our campaign, and the tremendous progress our effort has achieved to date, detailing the miraculous transformation that has already taken place in a nation and culture which was totally subjected by a brutal dictatorship for 30 plus years and is now an emerging democracy. That is truly a stupendous achievement which virtually no so-called expert on the Middle East was willing to predict. Yet there it is in Islamic Iraq of all places, for all the world to see! And in Islamic Afghanistan as well!

The speech also was accompanied by a 35 page, detailed plan, which has been in place since 2003, which lays out very clearly our strategy for victory in Iraq. This was made available for all to see. The democrat demagogues had been clamoring for just such a speech and plan for many months. They wanted to know what the president’s plan for success was. Democratic Rep. John Murtha insisted that our military is broken and worn out and unable to win a victory. This assertion by Murtha is one of the most outrageous examples of providing aid and comfort to the enemy in all of American history! His words will be used by Islamic terrorist leaders to encourage more terrorist murders. He now has the blood of every additional coalition casualty directly on his own hands! Our military is not broken or worn out. They are doing heroic work and should be getting nothing but praise and admiration from everyone, including democrat hacks like Murtha. He should be ashamed of himself!

President Bush, in his speech, put the lie to all of this nonsense for any fair-minded person to see.

The MSM response? Silence! It was as though President Bush had said nothing at all. Instead of reporting his speech point by point, they went immediately to the nay sayers. The only thing we saw connected to the president’s efforts was a gaggle of silly democrat responses by Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy, Murtha and the other usual suspects each of whom mouthed outrageous lies about what Bush had said. Kerry, who just a few weeks ago was insisting that we needed many more troops in Iraq, now denied supporting Murtha’s clear call for an immediate pull-out, (which he clearly had done) instead insisting that he was only looking for a "plan for success," which plan Kerry was apparently too dim to understand Bush had just delivered. What a liar! What an idiot! Nancy Pelosi blurted out some unintelligible blather about warmed-over stew, Kennedy accused our troops of failure in Iraq and of causing the insurgency (read terrorism), and yet these and other democrat mouthpieces were allowed to say what they said almost totally uncontested.

Fred Barnes has pointed out that bloggers, conservative talk shows, and to some extent Fox News has countered this trend, but as anyone can see by the polls, Joe Average American still believes the lies he hears every day and night on the MSM. It’s shocking. In Iraq, the Iraqis and US soldiers who are dealing with these terrorists on a daily basis and who are risking their lives, uniformly favor continued US presence by a healthy margin (70%). Why is it then that many Americans do not according to the polls? Could it be the daily, persistent, unrelenting negative drum beat by the leftists and their allies in the MSM? It almost certainly is! Our military and our alies in Iraq have enemies both in Iraq, and maybe even more dangerously, in the Democrat party and leftist press in is this country.

What can be done to stem this tide? The president and all of his spokesmen need to continually make loud noises about all the successes in Iraq, in the economy, in foreign policy world-wide that their policies has produced. Conservative talk shows must continue to point out the hypocrisy of the left wing press and politicians. Bloggers need to redouble their efforts to point out the truth, and expose the lies the democrats are speaking. This is far more important than mere politics, a fact that seems to be lost on all democrats except maybe Joe Lieberman. (Who gets the same treatment from the MSM as President Bush – Silence or contempt!) This fight is all about our eventual survival as a society – make no mistake about it. It is that serious. Blog on!