Akkam’s Razor

Gil Spencer, "Local" columnist for the DelcoTimes yet again carries the water for the "National" GOP questioning the media’s reluctance to report the "Good News" out of Iraq, deciding to focus instead of the negative coverage of death and destruction.  He focuses on a Bush "rally" (video), going on further to quote a Military mom (DelcoTimes):

Last week, a military wife in Wheeling, W.Va, begged President Bush to get the word out about all the good things that are being accomplished in Iraq.

She has seen it with her own eyes on the DVDs her husband made and brought home that show the reconstruction efforts and other positive stuff that American soldiers are doing for grateful Iraqis.

"I ask you from the bottom of my heart, for a solution to this," she said, "because it seems that our major media networks don’t want to portray the good. They just want to focus ..on another car bomb, or they just want to focus on some more bloodshed.."

While the woman spoke she was interrupted by a standing ovation from the rest of the crowd. What do these military families know that the rest of us don’t?

You could fill a 200GB harddrive with the things that Spencer doesn’t say.  He doesn’t tell you that any of the President’s speaking arrangements are by invite only.  He doesn’t tell you that typically you have to be a staunch loyalist, often to the point of having to take an oath to do so.  He doesn’t tell you that anyone who looks like they may be in opposition to the party line is escorted out under threat, often by a low level staffer masquerading as Secret Service.  He doesn’t tell you about the extent and efforts made by the Administration and Pentagon to somehow spin the <strike>Civil War </strike> sectarian violence into some kind of twisted version of victory, while all the while other rats are jumping off the sinking ship.  But not Spencer…this is his meal ticket, get the 20% of Bush haters fired up, rally the 20% of Bush defenders fired up, and watch the 60% of the confused, disinterested, and apathetic decipher the squabbling on SoundOff.

I challenge him to go read this post at the Mighty Middle, to realize how ridiculous he sounds cheerleading.  At some point in the future, he will have two choices - either tie the administration and their dangerous agenda around his own neck like a cinderblock and jump in the water, and forever associate himself with fringe wingnutdom,  or admit that we were right, and he was lied to. 

Those are his only choices.  Otherwise, he’ll have to accept the ridiculous analogies like this one:

PEARL HARBOR HAWAII. December 7, 1941. Planes from an undetected Japanese carrier force today attacked the US Naval fleet at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. The Japanese achieved complete surprise. American forces were unnable to mount more than token resistance as wave after wave of Japanese planes bombed and strafed at will, sinking numerous capital ships and crippling the American battleship force.

Despite the dastardly nature of the Japanese attack, not all was gloom and doom on these lovely islands. Luther McRae, fisherman and rummy, owns a small bait shack that sits on an acre of waterfront property just a few hundred yards beyond the anchorage of the USS Arizona. He sees nothing but good coming from today’s sneak attack. "This is huge. I mean, this is huge. First of all, now I get my view back. You see how big those battlewagons are? Were? They totally blocked my view. And the bells going off on those ships, oh my God, a man can’t sleep with the ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding. And if you look where the Arizona is now, hey, people are going to want to see that. Tourism is going to change everything. I’ll sell this bait shack for ten times what I paid for it."