Fair Weather Friends
Reported by Melanie - December 8, 2004
As most of our readers probably know, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held a town hall-style meeting with 1,200 of our troops in Kuwait earlier today. During the meeting Rumsfeld was asked several difficult questions. One soldier wondered why they had to "dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles." Another soldier asked about the Army's "stop loss" policy. Rumsfeld's answers were thoughtless, disrespectful and dismissive. News of the exchange has been extensively covered all day long on television, on the Internet and on the radio. (See this from Reuters for more information.)
COMMENT: During the two hours of Fox News which I watched today - Dayside and Your World w/Neil Cavuto - not one segment was devoted to this incident (between the two shows there were 23 segments, not counting news breaks). I heard about steroids, the "basketbrawl," Martha Stewart, and the price of tomatoes, but there was no discussion devoted to our troops trying to survive on a wing and a prayer.
For a news outlet which claims to be so pro-troop, you'd think they'd be all over this one with lots of guests and discussion. But no. It's not that Fox is necessarily pro-troop, it's pro-Bush, so evidently it's best to tuck this away as it makes Bush's Rummy, and Bush's war, look pretty bad.
