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Hurricanes, Hatred And Hypocrisy
By Oliver North
September 2, 2005
Page 2 of 2
This is the kind of press-prompted vitriol that has been evident for much of the summer outside the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Aided and abetted by the so-called mainstream media, Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, has been reduced to the role of center-piece for aging, '60s-era, anti-military radicals. Surrounded by a coterie of sound-bite savvy activists, she deviated from her "Get Out of Iraq Now" script this week to join Kennedy in blaming President Bush for the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.
All of this in the midst of the Katrina crisis is enough to make one wary of what Washington will be like for administration officials when Congress returns from their month-long vacation next week. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has already been summoned to appear before the Armed Services committees to "answer questions" about the war.
Rumsfeld, a regular target of rhetorical abuse from the left, has been through this before. When he last testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on June 23rd, the defense secretary was subjected to a disgusting verbal barrage from Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., that was shamefully personal. Had it not taken place in "the world's greatest deliberative body," it could have been branded as "hate speech."
The record of the hearing is replete with rancorous character attacks against a man who has worked tirelessly to prosecute a war against enemies who behead hostages and kill innocents. Sen. Kennedy's hypocrisy was boundless: "I'm talking about misjudgments, gross errors and mistakes. Those are on your watch. Isn't it time for you to resign?" he shouted. "Our troops deserve better, the American people deserve better." The Massachusetts liberal concluded his diatribe with a comment that might have been introspective: "They deserve competency and they deserve facts. In baseball, it's three strikes and you're out."
Byrd was equally shrill and contemptible, but he may simply have forgotten that Mr. Rumsfeld once served as a naval officer and a member of Congress. "I've just heard enough of your smart answers to these people here who are elected. We are elected. You're not elected," said the West Virginia Senator who never served in any uniform except the white cloak of the Ku Klux Klan. He then ordered the defense secretary: "So get off your high horse when you come up here ... Have a little respect for what we try to do."
As they used to tell us in the Marines: You cannot demand respect. You have to earn it.
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COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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