Friday, July 29, 2005

The undiapered leavings of incontinent minds

A Roanoke Times editorial this morning addresses proposed troop withdrawals from Iraq. It's title is "Cutting and running is the worst option."

Cutting and running. Think about the sheer pettiness of the mind that composed that title. For over two years now, George Bush has shown himself willing to stick to his guns in Iraq and "stay the course," as his father was wont to say. His concern for the well-being of American troops is undoubted by all fair-minded citizens. While there has been honest debate about the correctness of Bush's response, no one but rank, hateful partisans question that after 9/11 his main goal has been to uphold his oath "to protect and defend the United States."

Meanwhile, the Roanoke Times has does everything it can, in both its editorial pages and news pages, to undermine, mock, belittle, denigrate, insult, disparage, and smear Bush's efforts. When he visited Iraq in Thanksgiving 2003, the Times called him a turkey. The following Memorial Day, it defiled the memory of our dead by using the day for an editorial attacking George Bush. A few days prior to the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, the Times ran a bogus report that the Iraq invasion may have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. The day before the Iraq elections the Times headline blared that "panic" reined in the streets of Baghdad. Subsequent editorials have accused the Bush administration of deliberately cutting Veterans benefits, of using the war to enrich friendly corporations, and of embarking on a torture campaign equal to the gulags of Russia. The Roanoke Times pages serve as a case study for a news and editorial staff that have lost their moral compass.

Is it any wonder that most Southwest Virginians who still take the Times open it in the morning with all the pleasure of changing the day's first diaper?