AWOL DEMS
Senate Democratic leaders attempted to persuade Sen. John
Edwards not to travel to North Carolina with President
Bush on Thursday. “The White House was just playing politics,
trying to make it look like we were on board,” says a Democratic
leadership staffer, in attempting to explain this seemingly
incomprehensible move by the Democrats.
Edwards, of course, did not play ball with his leadership. While
he has waffled word-wise in his support of the Bush
Administration’s Iraq policy, he has for the most part remained
vocally in the pro-take-down Saddam camp.
Bush traveled to Camp Lejeune, and spoke to more than 25,000
troops and others at a rally that surely raised everyone’s spirits,
the president’s included. Bush had invited Edwards, Sen.
Elizabeth Dole and five North Carolina congressmen
to tag along with him on Air Force One.
Perhaps Senate Democrat leader have forgotten that even the
Clinton White House made efforts to invite senators of both parties
on presidential junkets that were more patriotic and bipartisan
than overtly political in character.
That Bush would invite Edwards, who is challenging Bush for the
presidency as he runs in the Democratic primary, “shows that we
just aren’t playing political ball the way the Democrats are,” says
a White House staffer. “They’re the ones playing politics. It’s
important that our citizens see our leaders working together. That
was the message, if you wanted to take one away from today. Really,
we were just being nice.”
Democrats in both the House and the Senate are getting
increasingly edgy about the politics of the war, as U.S. forces
continue to successfully pound the Iraqi military into the sand.
“We aren’t getting traction on anything right now,” says the
Democratic staffer. “I’m not sure any of our people know what to
do.” That is, other than act petty and unpatriotic.
LARRY KING ARNETT
On Wednesday night, CNN host Larry King had former Iraqi hostage
and Newsday reporter Matt McAllester on
his show. Most of America was riveted to TV on just about all of
the cable channels to hear updates on the rescue of 19-year-old
Army private Jessica Lynch and the release of
McAllester and three other journalists from a Baghdad prison.
One of the released journalists, a Danish photographer, had
detailed his own poor treatment — not enough blankets or sleep —
but said it was better than anyone else’s in the prison. He said he
heard and saw Iraqi prisoners being severely beaten and tortured.
Prisoners with their eyes gouged out and other horrifying human
rights violations.
Unfortunately, viewers of the Larry King show didn’t hear any of
what went on in the prison because King declined to ask McAllester
about it.
“We wanted him to ask about the brutality inside the prison, to
get McAllester talking about the human rights violations,” says a
CNN producer. “But King didn’t want to do it. I guess he didn’t
think it was that important.”
