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 |