Good news! The Army recruiting dilemma has been solved. Sophisticated political thinker Sen. James Inhofe has done Oklahoma proud once again with the discovery that the reason parents are discouraging their kids from enlisting isn’t the war after all, but “all the negative media.”
Apparently, the enlistment shortfall isn’t due to little things like the fact that June was the fifth deadliest month of the war for U.S. soldiers or that we continue to send out troops into battle without the proper equipment to keep them safe.
No, according to Inhofe, the reason the military is having trouble attracting people to fight for democracy in Iraq is due to our free press here at home. That might seem like a contradiction, but then you may not have as nuanced a concept of democracy and freedom -- not to mention reality -- as Sen. Inhofe.
You see, the Senator feels the media are covering Iraq too much. They’re just not devoting enough attention to things like white girls “missing in paradise,” shark attacks, and celebrity trials. If only we could get the media to stop obsessing on what’s going on in Iraq then maybe those parents wouldn’t be as reluctant to sign their kids right up.
Sen. Pat Roberts agrees: "With the deluge of negative news that we get daily, it's just amazing to me that anybody would want to sign up."
And it appears that it’s not just the “liberal media” like the New York Times that’s causing the problem. With Bush’s favorable rating now at 48 percent and his unfavorables at 50 percent -- and that’s in the red states! -- those small town newspaper editors must be hating America and our soldiers just as much as the traitors on the East coast.
So, yes, 68 soldiers died in Iraq in June, but that leaves over 137,000 soldiers who didn’t die. Why don’t the media report on that?
Every time Bush and Cheney come out and give their Pollyanna assessments of what is going on in Iraq, why do the America-hating media insist on undercutting them with the truth? Don’t they know that only leads people to distrust the president and make parents less likely to put the lives of their children in George Bush’s hands?
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