Feeding the Paranoia

You know how some Democrats are saying lets get rid of the politics of fear.
They claim that the current administration has played with the publics' fear
concerning terrorism. Today Adm. William Fallon resigned after participating
in "a recent Esquire magazine profile that portrayed him as resisting pressure
for military action against Iran, which the Bush administration accuses of
trying to develop nuclear weapons," according to this CNN article.

When the news broke, I was watching Fox News and this is what I saw and
heard:



Partial transcript:

Mary Anne Marsh: The problem here is the Bush administration
once again taking of their eye off the ball. Not on Afghanistan
or Iraq but now they want to go to Iran and that is at the
heart of this matter.

Shepard Smith: You believe it is, don't you?

Mary Anne Marsh: It appears that way.

Shepard Smith: Because it was Admiral Fallon who was advising against it
and wove, if you read that article, he wove an argument that we really
don't have what we need Iraq. We can't sustain. This is working great in
Iraq, I think was his position but we can't maintain these numbers because
numbers are finite and we don't have this move around to make this work
even in Afghanistan much less to try to get bigger.

Mary Anne Marsh: Right we don't have the support, the troops with our
allies. So we are really relying entirely, almost, on the U.S. military and
what we're doing to our troops is the stays are longer, the breaks are
shorter. They've been really worn out in 5 or 6 years now and
we just don't have the resources to do two wars; let alone three.

Excuse me but isn't this the politics of fear? Because all I've ever heard consistently
from the Bush administration is that we are going to use diplomacy. Please someone
direct to me to President Bush or any high ranking military commander saying that
we're going to war with Iran. I also wonder how President Bush can go to war with Iran
when a) he has less than a year left b) very little public support. The day he declares
war with the Iran is the day he gets impeached. Also, why in the world would the
administration let a report like this get out if they intend to make the case for war.
So to me this notion that we're going to invade Iran is ridiculous.

I think it was extremely irresponsible for Shep not to grill Mary Ann Marsh on the
notion it's inevitable that we're going into Iran. Instead, he just sat there and agreed
with her. It's disgusting that kind of stuff gets passed as news. It's more like little chatter
bugs mucking up fear. Like I commented on Hot Air today, "If the public actually paid
attention to the news they might work the masses into a frenzy and that is the MOST
dangerous thing I can think of that the media can do."