Carpe Datum

Four Aces

An ABC News reporter and several soldiers in Iraq made the mistake of publishing a brutally honest interview the other day. Best quote of the interview was from a sergeant:

The aces in my deck are Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and Paul Wolfowitz.

As you might imagine, reaction was sent down from Washington through the chain of command swiftly. The soldiers were rebuked and no longer comment. Their C. O.'s are in hot water. The White House also contacted the gossip Matt Drudge and got him to headline a story on his web site saying the reporter was both gay and Canadian. The Media Horse is following this very well.

Unfortunately, as I expected, Iraq has been mostly pushed back to the back pages of the newspaper now. Kobe Bryant and the old guy who crashed through the California market are the new topics of distraction. We'll be fed front-page boldface updates on those stories for weeks to come while more soldiers die in Iraq every day.

Republicans are getting smart, though. They are making noises of holding some sort of investigation on the matter, and it will undoubtedly turn out exactly like the investigation of the abuses of the Homeland Security Department in looking for the Killer D's in Texas. They'll make a little show of exhonorating everyone involved, and the media will report it as though the original wrongdoing is just as significant as the Democratic whining, which of course is just rude, shameful and partisan.

Meanwhile, in Texas, they continue to try to redraw political boundaries and redistrict a bunch more Republicans into the U. S. Congress. Republicans are saying it is really unfair that their party got more of the popular vote in Texas while Democrats got more Congressional seats because of the electoral process. Many Democratic letter-writers are reminding them that by this logic, Al Gore should be in the White House. I'd make that trade, sure.

Posted by Observer at July 19, 2003 09:33 AM