AGF writes:

Do you know that the military is dangerous? That people get killed in training? In peacetime? From friendly fire? You can bash the troops, piss on the flag, and hump your Noam Chomsky blowup doll all you want, but I’m sick and tired of you running around like you’re Bob Woodward and this is Watergate. Yes, Pat was shot in the back by his own troops. Get over it.

I’m surprised that AGF is so obtuse. Of course what happened to Pat Tillman has happened in every war. There’s nothing particularly newsworthy about the way that he died. The way that he died, however, is not the point of my column. (And I’ve hardly played Bob Woodward here. I’ve quoted mainstream media courses throughout the piece as prima facie proof that I was commenting on a reported story rather than uncovering new facts.)

What’s noteworthy is the massive gap between what the American people believe happened–because the government told them via their state-controlled media–and the truth. The credibility chasm is made all the more worthy of discussion by the fact that the government used Tillman’s death to sell the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Had the Bushies and their media poodles settled for issuing an “ain’t that sad” statement after his death (even if they’d lied about the friendly fire aspect), this story wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But they didn’t. They broadcast a nationally televised paean to the man and the war in which he fell. They set him up as an example to emulate.

A few months ago an interviewer asked me: “Don’t you care about Pat Tillman?” “No,” I told him. Because it’s too late to care about Pat Tilllman. Had I met him before he enlisted, I would have strongly advised him not to serve in a patently immoral cause under a despotic, idiotic and careless commander in chief. But I didn’t. Now I care about the young men and women who might (mistakenly) view Tillman’s example as one worth copying. Deconstructing the Tillman myth–and it is a myth–is part of desconstructing the whole post-9/11 myth that we’re invading oil-strategic nations in order to defend ourselves. Tillman’s story is one of foolishness, brashness and misguided ideals.

It is a cautionary tale, and one that should be retold until not one single American continues to believe the official lie.

Boycott the New York Times?

Well, they certainly boycott me. Only one of my books has ever been reviewed in their pages and as part of a lengthy round-up of humor books at that. John asks:

I just finished that astonishing column and wondered, is there anything this administration has done that has truly shocked you? And do we really need to keep patronizing the New York Times? Can’t we target one of these media giants for an economic boycott?

It takes a lot to shock me, but yes, the Bushies managed to shock the shit out of me by sending James Baker III to the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer during the 2000 Florida recount to threaten a coup d’état in the event that the recount wasn’t stopped. That act convinced me that these were dictatorial maniacs who despise our constitutional system and the rule of law. Moreover, it convinced me that they were capable of anything.

Much of what they did was garden variety conservative Republicanism: supply-side tax cuts gone wild, scapegoating minorities, etc. But even their more extreme acts–openly condoning torture and murder, preemptive warfare against countries that posed no threat, etc.–didn’t really surprise me. Anyone capable of overthrowing the duly elected president of the United States (Al Gore) is obviously capable of anything.

In a way, there’s already a media boycott of the New York Times and other media outlets. Their circulation is falling as younger readers turn to alternative news sources online and the freebie alt weeklies. All we have to do is long enough; eventually pro-censorship dailies will die the dog’s death they richly deserve.

WHere’s His Book Deal?

Joshua write:

Death by enemy or friendly fire is a fact of life in war. Tillman joining up was inspirational in its own. The way he died did not take away from that. Unfortunately, rewriting his death the way the Army did does take away from his sacrifice.
As far as Jessica Lynch is concerned: She and the rest of her unit were ambushed and captured due to their own substandard performance. Their weapons jammed because they didn’t clean them and they were hit through a lack of vigilance and tactical awareness. Glorifying leadership and soldier failure is again the wrong answer. My unit did everything right, where’s my book deal. I guess I need to fail miserably at command at the expense of human lives for my own 15 minutes.

Down the Spider Hole

Because people are asking:

Pastor writes:

I love your comic and the article I just read on Yahoo was great
stuff too. It was the article talking about all of the propaganda about the
military coming through the media these days. You posed the question of
whether it was really Saddam emerging from the spider hole. You we’re
close, I guess you never saw this story:

Ex-Marine Says Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction

http://www.wokr13.tv/news/national/story.aspx?content_id=422B960A-26BA-4891-9E60-21C8818788D4

Apparently your cynicism is ahead of your research. Keep up the good work.

And: Wisdom of the Ages

Don writes:

Dear Ted: I am a WW2 vet and have always been aware of the horrors of war after going to France and England at the end of the war.

From the very beginning of this Iraqi war, I have been extremely upset with the death and maiming of our young soldiers, plus the damage that has been done to the poor people of Iraq. I have never thought the war was worth it and our intentions were not what I have known as the reasons we have fought wars in my time. As time goes on, the polls reveal that I was right with my first impressions of our diplomacy, as more and more people are aligning with my assessment of this mess we find ourselves in.

I look forward to your column each week, so keep up the good work. You are doing a great job and exposing some of the lies and misleading information that has been going on since Bush got in office. I can’t get over how Americans have gone from being heros and liberators in WW2 to being hated and considered a bully by most of the world today. There is a lot wrong with the way we are running this great country and I hope your writings will help turn this thing around.
Keep up the good work.

God, I hope so.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

And it’s pretty unlikely to happen.

FOR Izzy writes:

Re “Down The Spider Hole” and whether the capture of Saddam was staged…
At this point, the presumption–based on mountains of evidence–is that ANYTHING BushCo tells us is a lie. Like the quaint, used-to-be, Constitutional, pre-UnPatriot Act of presumption of innocence, this group has earned the presumption of lying.
I get the impression they now lie even when they don’t have to, just out of habit… or standard policy. So, my question would be not is it possible The Capture was staged, but why would we think it wasn’t?
As with everything else, you have to ask, “Why would they do this?”
And as always, the answer is to keep the sheep (51% of the country, plus the media) following them and distracted from the horror creeping up around us . These people are rotten to the core. Their sole objective is to increase their power–at any cost–and find a way to make it permanent (e,g, the stolen 2004 election, which I think was a completely successful trial for how to eliminate any semblance of democracy permanently.

Sadly I have nothing to take issue with here. At this point the Bushies have lied so often and to such a fantastic extent that everything they say should be assumed to be untrue until it can be checked out. To paraphrase Reagan: distrust, then verify if you feel like it.

Why mainstream media types don’t operate under the assumption that government officials and liars are liars is beyond me.

The Two 16-Year-Old Girls From Queens

He didn’t request it, but I’m granting anonymity to the following correspondent:

On behalf of the Muslim community, I want to thank you for your support for the Bangladeshi and Guinean girls. In these times when it is fashionable to bash Muslims and Arabs, you sir are indeed a breath of fresh air. Too bad the Washington Post gave up on a  great political cartoon. At least the Seattle PI has one of your cartoons every Saturday
Your cartoons do indeed have a very sharp message but they always get people to think, and that is the purpose of your work! Again, thanks a million and keep up the great work.

It was my pleasure. Nothing has made me more ashamed of my country than the disgusting way the current administration has scapegoated, detained and even murdered innocent people for rank political gain. Whatever little I can do to counterbalance these horrible, large-scale wrongs will never be enough, but please hang in there–America often loses its mind, and it takes many decades for sanity to be restored–but it usually happens eventually.

Classic Hate Mail Makes a Comeback

rjstrah@msn.com writes:

Finally saw you on TV. I had no idea you were a homo. That explains your limp-wristed, pre-emptive surrender, foriegn policy,……. but most gays I know are bright. You’re ignorance is somewhat unique.
You don’t think swallowing man-juice can affect intelligence?……..do you?

I know smart gays, I know dumb gays. I sincerely doubt that homosexuality is related to intelligence. Oh, and I’m not saying whether or not I’m gay because to even address the question is to accept the premise that being called gay is an insult–which I don’t consider it to be. What I will say, however, is that anyone who can find proof that I advocate “surrender” (to whom?) or pacificism would surprise me. One of my greatest criticisms of Bush’s GWOT is that it has yet to begin. The 9/11 perps are still out there in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan–and Bush raised their allowance.

Everything else is just bullshit distraction.

Glorious, Glorious Sarcasm

David sarcastically notes that the Washington Post ran an Tillman expose on page one:

Regarding today’s “BLACK AND WHITE AND FULL OF CRAP: Lies Run Big, Facts
Small in U.S. Media”: I couldn’t agree more. The only reason I learned
that Tillman was killed by friendly fire was because of a (two-part) piece
the Washington Post burried (on page A1) on consecutive days:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35717-2004Dec4.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37679-2004Dec5.html
To be fair to the Post, they did include maps:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/daily/graphics/tillman_120504.html

Thing is, that December series wasn’t THE Tillman expose–the one that came out a week ago that quotes a US Army report about the deliberate COVER UP of Tillman’s death by friendly fire.

More to the point, though: the way the American media in general handled both the December ’04 and May ’05 stories–hardly at all. The New York “Newspaper of Record” Times ran the latest cover-up story as a single paragraph as part of a national news round-up buried deep inside the paper, and they were hardly alone. Ask most Americans how Tillman died, and I guarantee you a majority still believe the original, played up lie over the subseqeueny played-down truth.

Stinky Website

Rob writes:

Your website provider stinks! Your server is down all the time. Very
frustrating.

No one finds this more annoying than I. Anyway, it’s Matt Drudge’s fault. When he began linking to my site last year, it started crashing not only my site but other people’s unrelated sites housed on the same server. To avoid this we instituted a policy which limits the number of people who can simultaneously view anything at Ted Rall Online. That means that off hours tend to be pretty easy to get in while peak surfing hours (while slacking on the job, let’s face it) can be dicey.

The best solution would be for me to change servers to a bigger, more expensive, company. But like my other cartoonists and writers, I’m already ambivalent about the effect of this site and therefore reluctant to spend even more money on it. On the one hand, it allows millions of people who don’t live in cities that publish my work in newspapers to read it. But it doesn’t generate much revenue, except when I have a new book out and need to publicize tour dates, etc. Moreover, it may even cost me more money because readers who live in the cities that don’t publish me have zero incentive to write their editors to ask that they pick me up. It’s not just me–cartoons and columns are being read more widely than ever before thanks to the Internet–and paying their creators less than ever. (Believe me, you’d be shocked shocked shocked to learn how little this work pays.)

The bottom line: until this site starts generating more revenue or some angel comes along with a stipend to keep it going, I’m keeping the old cheapie server. And I’m keeping the old 1997-style design until I find an extra $4000 to do a redesign.