To: letters@kcstar.com
Subject: Bush and the media
Date: 09/06/04

Here's a quick little quiz: Who's more sensitive, John Kerry or Dick Cheney?
If you guessed "John Kerry", you are wrong! In fact, in spite of Dick Cheney's
recent attempts to take John Kerry's intelligent comments completely out of
context by focusing on a single word., it turns out that the whole Bush
league is pretty gosh darned "sensitive" after all.

Here is what folks like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and
others have said with regards to this whole "sensitivity" thing.

GEORGE W. BUSH: "...because America is powerful, we must be sensitive about
expressing our power and influence."

GEORGE W. BUSH: "In terms of the balance between running down intelligence
and bringing people to justice obviously is -- we need to be very sensitive
on that."

DICK CHENEY: "We recognize that the presence of U.S. forces can in some cases
present a burden on the local community. We're not insensitive to that. We
work almost on a continual basis with the local officials to remove points of
friction and reduce the extent to which problems arise in terms of those
relationships."

DONALD RUMSFELD: "...we have to be sensitive, to the extent the world thinks
the United States is focused on the problems in Iraq, it's conceivable that
someone could make a mistake and believe that that's an opportunity for them
to take an action which they otherwise would have avoided."

DONALD RUMSFELD: "[U.S. commanders are] ...sensitive to the importance of
troops knowing what the rotation plan will be so they have some degree of
certainty in their lives. And [they] are sensitive to the importance of the
quality of their lives."

RICHARD MYERS Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: [When asked about whether
the military would be "sensitive" to religious issues in prosecuting the War
on Terror] "We are, I think, very culturally sensitive."

RICHARD MYERS Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "...we can ask of
our troops to go out there and be, on the one hand, very sensitive to cultural
issues, on the other hand, be ready to respond in self-defense to a very
ticklish situation, all at the same time."

RICHARD MYERS Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "[U.S. troops] are
very sensitive to the balance between appropriate military action and not
trying to turn the average Iraqi against the coalition."

TOMMY FRANKS: "Everyone from the president to Secretary Rumsfeld right
through me were very sensitive, to be sure, that our operations moved ahead
in Afghanistan in parallel with what we were doing in Iraq."

JOHN ASHCROFT: "The United States is very sensitive about interfering in
the internal politics of other countries."

JOHN ASHCROFT: "The [Justice Department] agents and officers who conducted
the interviews did so in a sensitive manner, showing full respect for the
rights and dignity of the individuals being interviewed."

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: "I think we've made it clear we're going to be sensitive to
the fact that Ramadan is the holiest month on the Muslim calendar and we will
have that in mind."

Bill Underwood

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=139030#2