Monday, June 28, 2004
Drafting Public Opinion
This just makes me so mad. It's one thing for a person to have a beef witht he Bush administration for its decision. It's quite another to MAKE UP issues and try to paint the current administration as the bad guy. Case in point:
On Friday, a coworker sent an email to the entire department regarding an editorial on an online infotainment site named This Draft Doesn't come from a Keg. The article spoke of the horrors of the draft and how the Bush administration has a secret plan to reinstate the draft during his second term. In order to do so, legislation would have to be passed, and the writer specifically named the bills before Congress to do so: S. 89 and HR 163, which are both being reviewed currently.
The key problem with this accusation is that both bills were sponsored by Democrats, not by Republicans or any one allied with the Bush White House. The Senate bill was drafted by Senator Ernest Hollings and the House bill by Representative Charles Rangel, a long outspoken critic of the Bush administration. Rangel introduced the bill to speak about the gap between the enlistemeent of minorities and Caucasians.
This is the second time in as many months I have seen this accusation made. It's a great con - Democrats sponsor a Bill, then wait a few months until the initial news reports die down and then subtly accuse the Republicans as being the architects of the very same legislation! It's a scare tactic, pure and simple, and it's decptive and misleading.
Of course, the website that sent this out does not have a comment section for editorials, not does it has a contact us page to vent. I wrote an email back to everyone at work telling them of this key omitted fact. Personally I'd rather avoid sending politics to coworkers that might not want to read it, but I felt in this case it was warranted.
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