Scrapbook
Scrapbook Mr. Multilateral Much has been made in recent days of John Kerry's boasting about support for his candidacy from undisclosed foreign leaders. After former Malaysian prime minister and...
...They don't want you to see anything...
...Give us the truth...
...A little over three weeks after that, she joined a protest outside the Dover Air Force base in Dover, Delaware, which grimly doubles as our largest military mortuary...
...Senator Kerry speaks often about the need for international cooperation, and has vowed to usher in a "golden age of American diplomacy...
...After former Malaysian prime minister and noted eugenics theorist Mahathir Mohamad offered his backing on the record, the Kerry campaign moved quickly to put an end to the endorsement talk...
...Last February, her 24-year-old son, U.S...
...A woman named Sue Niederer is fast becoming one of the most quoted critics of the war in Iraq...
...The whole flap was good for a few laughs—something The Scrapbook predicts will be in short supply in this campaign...
...Give us the truth," said Sue Niederer, of Pennington, NJ, whose 24-year-old son, Dvorin, was killed in Iraq in February...
...And occupying its unique niche—C-SPAN is funded by the cable industry to cover Congress and public events—it has managed to perform feats of civic education that are unmatched by better-funded institutions, such as the History Channel, PBS, the Smithsonian, or the multibillion-dollar foundations...
...Do your job and hold those accountable who have denied us the truth...
...soldiers who advocate the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq...
...Happy Birthday, C-SPAN Twenty-five years ago, on March 19, 1979, C-SPAN began its live broadcasts from the floor of the House of Representatives...
...Niederer told the New Jersey H^'me News Tribune...
...He is fond of mentioning that some countries did not support America's actions in Iraq...
...Our message to Congress today is clear: spare us the platitudes, the pious rhetoric, the empty slogans...
...Spare us the platitudes, the pious rhetoric, the empty slogans...
...How to Stage a Controversy (cont...
...Last Wednesday, March 17, Nieder-er showed up at the Capitol, where she again took part in an antiwar protest, this time as members of the House of Representatives were debating a resolution in support of Coalition troops as well as the Iraqis, who signed a provisional constitution on March 8. (The resolution passed 327-93...
...Military Families Speak Out, in turn, had come to the Capitol at the behest of Win Without War, a coalition of leftist antiwar groups, to advocate that Congress censure President Bush...
...And—well—those fears proved prophetic...
...Matthew Continetti detailed in last week's issue ("How to Stage a Controversy") the press's increasing penchant for relying on left-wing public relations hounds when writing anti-Bush stories —without identifying their sources' affiliations...
...Two weeks after burying her son, she took her message to Princeton, where she was one of several protesters outside a lecture hall in which Colin Powell was delivering a speech...
...But the controversy also obscured a more serious problem with Kerry's attempt to position himself as Mr...
...As for The Scrapbook, we'll take John Howard or Tony Blair over Mahathir Mohamad any day...
...It is slow in a world growing more hyper...
...Sanitizing the quotations they lift from press releases may be a new low...
...Censure President Bush for the deceptions and manipulations that led our nation to war...
...It also left out the second half of her quote, which spells out the Win Without War agenda: "Our message to Congress today is clear," she says in the press release...
...It is word-oriented in an era that is visually sophisticated...
...But, on balance, there is a lot to celebrate in the C-SPAN culture...
...His mother believes Dvorin died a pointless death...
...The AP account not only omitted Niederer's political affiliation, which was made clear in the press release put out by Win Without War and MoveOn.org...
...There were fears that the sozzled, dyspeptic solons then populating the House would as a result be supplanted by blow-dried, stuffed-shirt camera hogs...
...It's not a declared war so what did my son die for...
...Dvorin saved the lives of 18 soldiers in his platoon...
...government in general—and the military in particular—is deceiving the public: "They don't want you to see the body...
...Yet of the many nations that have joined our coalition—allies and friends of the United States—Senator Kerry speaks with open contempt...
...This basic truth was among the points Vice President Dick Cheney made in an excellent speech last week...
...Especially on the weekends, the people who fill its screens seem quaintly and bravely out of step: the historian who has devoted her career to researching Pickett's Charge, the auctioneer who specializes in rare 18th-century books, the biographer who has spent years describing John Adams...
...Niederer made it into the Associated Press's account, headlined, "House Iraq Resolution Turns into Partisan Debate": Outside the Capitol, opponents of the Iraqi operation, including military families, rallied against administration policies...
...Many questions come to mind, but the first is this: How would Senator Kerry describe Great Britain— coerced, or bribed...
...Before he died, caught in the blast from a roadside bomb, Lt...
...Army Lt...
...If such dismissive terms are the vernacular of the golden age of diplomacy Senator Kerry promises, we are left to wonder which nations would care to join any future coalition...
...It is simply not appropriate for any foreign leader to endorse a candidate in America's presidential election," said Kerry foreign policy adviser Rand Beers...
...Senator Kerry calls these countries "window dressing...
...Great Britain, Australia, Italy, Spain, Poland, and more than 20 other nations have contributed and sacrificed for the freedom of the Iraqi people...
...over 400 people showed up for his funeral in New Jersey...
...Was Italy's contribution just window dressing...
...With its open phone lines, it is genuinely populist in a culture that preaches populism more than it practices it...
...They are, in his words, "a coalition of the coerced and the bribed...
...Seth Dvorin, was killed in Iskandariyah, a city outside of Baghdad...
...Senator Kerry's characterization of our good allies is ungrateful to nations that have withstood danger, hardship, and insult for standing with America in the cause of freedom...
...John Kerry does not seek, and will not accept, any such endorsements...
...Or Italy—which recently lost 19 citizens, killed by terrorists in Najaf...
...A truth that the Associated Press did not see fit to mention is that Niederer was at the Capitol as a member of Military Families Speak Out, a group of relatives of U.S...
...C-SPAN is factual in a world grown theoretical...
...The next day, March 15, she traveled to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Bethes-da, Maryland, where she told the Toronto Star: "Anyone who has been killed over there has died in vain...
...In his eagerness to please our would-be foreign friends, he insults the allies we have...
...By contrast, she explained to ABC News that day, the U.S...
...David Brooks put it well in these pages five years ago: "When you step back far enough you begin to appreciate that C-SPAN is so far out of tune with the times that it has become an intellectual counterculture...
...The protesters, she told AP, are "telling the truth about what's going on...
...Nied-erer is from Pennington, New Jersey...
...He speaks as if only those who openly oppose America's objectives have a chance of earning his respect...
Vol. 9 • March 2004 • No. 28
