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Link to The Tribune’s Endorsement

 

 

Letter to the Editor, e-mailed Thursday October 21, 2004 to Don Wycliff and [email protected] of the Tribune Editorial Board.

E-mail me here

 

I was deeply offended by the Tribune’s endorsement not so much because of the end result, but rather the support used to justify it. I can understand support for Bush. I don’t agree with it, but I can understand a position that believes that America is entitled to impose its military might in other countries, that the government should serve business and corporate interests, that trickle down economics is desirable, that federal social programs are not valuable, etc. Those who aligns themselves with these and similar ideals will surely value the policies put forth by this administration and support Bush’s reelection.

 

However, the Tribune’s editorial endorsing Bush reflected little intellectual review of issues or critical analysis. In fact, the dearth of any rudimentary independent research rises to such a profound degree that it places the integrity of the work in question. The endorsement was replete with the same simplistic, disingenuous, and dishonest distortions against Kerry that one finds being made by only the most partisan operatives. Some assertions are so easily discredited that the endorsement can only evidence the Tribune’s reckless disregard for the truth.

 

The Tribune appears to replicate the Bush administration’s methodology for addressing issues. That is, by making a decision relying only on isolated supporting facts while willfully ignoring contrary facts. So, in that sense, I can understand why the Tribune aligns itself with Bush

 

I have many problems with the endorsement, but I’ll highlight just a few of the absurd justifications found in it:

 

(1) Painting Kerry as using “cautiously calibrated” words to put forth a claim the Kerry will ONLY attack once we are attacked is profoundly incorrect. Kerry has stated on a number of occasions that he agrees with the long accepted right of preemptive action when necessary. As recently as the last debate Kerry said that “No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.” Implying that Kerry will have only a reactive posture is simply wrong and any justification that relies on such a horribly incomplete analysis evinces either a clear intention to ignore facts or an inability to fully research a position.

 

(2) Bush has nurtured new alliances with nations such as Poland, Romania, and Ukraine? Poland has committed to removing troops by the end of 2005. However, is the implication that a Kerry plan of building a true coalition would have excluded these countries? That’s a silly assertion. It is reasonable, and very likely, that these countries would have certainly been our allies if a more comprehensive UN alliance was formed.

 

(3) Kerry has used his status as a war hero as an excuse not to have a coherent position on America’s national security. This statement could have been taken verbatim from the RNC’s position to portray Kerry as a “flip-flopper.” It has been a horrible deficiency on the part of the media not to challenge these outrageous assertions as they occur. Rather, the media has become a stenographer of news and has perpetuated, and become complicit in, this dishonest campaign. Simply because negligent reporting on the Tribune’s part has found no “coherent position” does not mean one does not exist. Every statement Kerry has made has been entirely consistent with the position that - yes Hussein was a horrible person and it’s a good thing that he’s gone, but the manner in which Bush invaded Iraq was wrong. Without getting into a lengthy dissertation, Kerry voted for the president’s authority to go to war and Kerry would have gone about it much differently, and he articulated as such throughout the war. I challenge anyone to offer a reasoned position otherwise. I would have expected such a shallow justification from a Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity because they aren’t real newsmen, but not from the Tribune.

(4) Bush did not provoke Libya to surrender its weapons programs. This has been an outrageous lie that has been repeated with impunity. Negotiations with Libya have been going on for years and there is little evidence other than Republican fabrication that the Iraq war compelled Libya to disarm. While it offers a simplistic syllogism for the media to repeat, there is little if any solid evidence to support it. I’ll offer the following as just a few of the many sources that could have been reviewed prior to making such an incorrect assertion - here, here, here, and here.

(5) Bush “will go to his tomb defending his reliance on intelligence from agencies around the globe that turned out to be wrong.” This conveniently ignores the fact that Bush also received plenty of intelligence that supported contrary views and he chose to ignore them. The relevant determination here is not that Bush was helpless because he had bad intelligence, it’s that he was given a choice between two equally justified paths and he chose the reckless one. Given his record in making decisions in a similar fashion, I think the greatest danger in a second Bush administration is that he will employ the same irresponsible analysis on future issues.

(6) Kerry the “now-professed anti-war candidate”? There is no support for making such a reckless statement. At best, one could reference the RNC website that strategically edited an interview with Chris Matthews on Hardball for support. By providing this completely fabricated analysis, there is a serious question as to where the content of the Tribune endorsement originated and whether there was any independent effort to verify its claims.

(7) Asserting that Kerry didn’t vote to finance the war is simply the most absurd statement any intelligent analysis can offer to criticize Kerry. Simply put, any person that uses Kerry’s vote against the $87 billion bill is either intentionally deceiving the public or has no understanding for how the legislative process works, either of which is a dangerous characteristic for a respected newspaper.

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the legislative process in general (and the process surrounding the $87 billion bill in question) knows that this is a failed analysis of the facts. Funding the troops was never in doubt by anyone. It was going to happen. Bush’s funding choice was to borrow money to pay for it. Kerry proposed an amendment calling for the wealthiest Americans to help pay for the measure. Kerry voted for it, many Republicans voted against it, and Bush threatened to veto it. Does that mean that the president’s veto suggests he was against funding our troops? No, that’s a silly conclusion. Bush’s position, I presume, was to hope that Kerry’s funding version failed so his funding version would win. Just like many bills that come through the Congress, there are many different versions that come up for a vote. Kerry’s version did fail and it came up again with the president’s borrowing language. Kerry voted against it not because he was against the troops, that’s absurd. It’s because he was hoping the language would be further refined to include a responsible funding provision. Senator Kerry expressed this position before, during, and after the vote.

(8) Spend the time and read Kerry’s detailed Our Plan for America before making such a ridiculous statement like Kerry “has not delivered a compelling blueprint for change.” One can disagree with Kerry’s ideas, but to say Kerry has no blueprint for change again adds to the recklessness of the Tribune’s analysis. The reporting on Kerry’s ideas should not suffer due to the Tribune’s inability to engage in responsible research.

(9) In perhaps the most egregious example of negligent reporting, the Tribune’s endorsement provides that “[w]hat’s not debatable is that Kerry did nothing to oppose White House policy on Iraq until he trailed the dovish Howard Dean in the race for his party’s nomination.” While I’d be willing to bet a Chicago Tribune subscription that a simple Lexis search for Kerry statements on Iraq before June 2003 (arguably when Dean became the frontrunner) will show many instances of disagreement with Bush policy, one only has to look to Kerry’s statement on the Senate floor on October 9, 2002 when he justified his vote to authorize force in Iraq – long before Kerry “trailed the dovish Howard Dean” (emphasis mine)

[Today] is a time when international institutions must rise to the occasion and seek new authority and a new measure of respect. . . .

As the President made clear earlier this week, "Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable." It means "America speaks with one voice."

Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies.

In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.

If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent--and I emphasize "imminent"--threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has recognized a similar need to distinguish how we approach this. He has said that he believes we should move in concert with allies, and he has promised his own party that he will not do so otherwise. The administration may not be in the habit of building coalitions, but that is what they need to do. And it is what can be done. If we go it alone without reason, we risk inflaming an entire region, breeding a new generation of terrorists, a new cadre of anti-American zealots, and we will be less secure, not more secure, at the end of the day, even with Saddam Hussein disarmed.

Let there be no doubt or confusion about where we stand on this. I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever exhaust those other options, as the President has promised, but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances.

In voting to grant the President the authority, I am not giving him carte blanche to run roughshod over every country that poses or may pose some kind of potential threat to the United States. Every nation has the right to act preemptively, if it faces an imminent and grave threat, for its self-defense under the standards of law. The threat we face today with Iraq does not meet that test yet. I emphasize "yet." Yes, it is grave because of the deadliness of Saddam Hussein's arsenal and the very high probability that he might use these weapons one day if not disarmed. But it is not imminent, and no one in the CIA, no intelligence briefing we have had suggests it is imminent. None of our intelligence reports suggest that he is about to launch an attack.

“If we go it alone without reason, we risk inflaming an entire region, breeding a new generation of terrorists, a new cadre of anti-American zealots, and we will be less secure, not more secure, at the end of the day, even with Saddam Hussein disarmed.” It seems Kerry was far more visionary than George Bush ever was. You can’t convince me that Bush couldn’t have foreseen the result we have in Iraq.

And now my fingers are tired from typing so much. I’d move on to domestic policy, but the Tribune endorsement devoted so little effort to exploring the horrendous economic record of the Bush administration that I suppose I’ll do the same. I guess the Tribune believes that a reasonable domestic policy can be completely ignored because of the threat to national security.

Finally, in the spirit of keeping this correspondence civil, I’ll reserve my comment on the Tribune’s observation that Bush’s integrity and abilities are exemplary.

Thank you for your time.