June 9, 2005, KUIK 1360 AM, Hillsboro -- the chief guest in the 6:30 - 7:00 time slot this morning was Bob Schieffer, who since the fraud Dan Rather slid out under the door, is now the anchor of the evening news on that network.  Interviewed by Don Imus, Schieffer said that he saw the new film about the life of Vietnam-era POW, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz), and was so shocked by the brutal treatment of American prisoners that it caused him to want to see Gitmo shut down immediately.

"I don't want my kids to think we do that sort of thing," he said.

This is why as much as one doesn't want to, one must accept the possibility that San Francisco conservative radio firebrand, Michael Savage, is right when on the cover of his latest book he lables liberalism as a mental disorder.  Schieffer's statement is clear indication of a mind that has slipped a few gears.

A charge is a question until proven true

While Amnesty International and others of that ilk have described the American military prison camp at Guantanamo in Cuba as a "gulag," it is a charge without a feather's weight of substance -- like, say, Nazi Germany blaming that nation's problems on the Jews.  Schieffer, who is old enough to at least be aware that WWII happened, must be suffering the dementia of aging, although that sort of thing isn't a requirement for a liberal to make outrageously stupid statements.  They say things like that quite often, in fact.

A fine comparison to the Hanoi Hilton, where McCain was held, would be the Abu Graib prison of the Hussein Era.  (Our "tortures" are fraternity hazings compared to the practices of him and his sons.) 

Anybody can say anything about anything.  A charge is an invisible fantasy floating in air without substance supporting it.  The charges President Bush made about the torture of people in Iraq have been substantiated.  Babies were cut from the living wombs of mothers and political prisoners were fed feet first, alive, into plastic shredding machines.  The charges POW's made against the North Vietnamese were substantiated over and over again.  Wooden boxes for cages, electric shock to testicles, people beaten senseless -- all these and more happened.  The charges Jews made about Auschwitz are proven.  Millions of starved skeletons and bodies of gassed children stuffed into cremation ovens, but for which there wasn't time to finish the job.  The yanks showed up at the cremetory door and saw it all.

Where's the beef?

Where, then, is a single, damned solitary substantiation (proof) that Gitmo is either a Hanoi Hilton as Schieffer believes, an Auschwitz or a Soviet-era Gulag?  Are the charges made by the incarcerated proof that such conditions exist?  (Is anybody in prison in Oregon guilty?)  How odd that an American torture facility arranges to provide the exact dietary requirements for Moslems.  How strange that this brutal place gives each Moslem prisoner a Koran -- handed to him by a soldier wearing white gloves.

Lunatics are driving the bus

Your mainstream press is insane, America.  Your mainstream anchors of both sexes from Melissa McDermott in the morning to Bob Schieffer in the evening, are defective-brained fact-distortion boxes which spout empty leftist tripe morning, noon and night. 

The level of this prevarication or perceptive paucity (I can't tell which) is of such dimensions that the mainstream media has become a farce.  A slapstick lampoon reflection of journalism.

I guess the powers-that-be at Hillsboro's KUIK run Imus and his guests because this leftist propaganda represents ideological balance when set against the rest of the day's programming, which includes people like Jayne Carroll who have both brains and judgement.  But, I am not sure that in the name of balance, this Imus/Schieffer sort of thing is the answer.  It feels like going too far to give station time to people who compare America to the most vile tyrannies to ever exist on Earth.

Schieffer, the host of the CBS Evening News, did it on KUIK AM radio this morning.  Don Imus treated the statement with quiet respect, though later in the program seemed to be backing away from what Schieffer said.  Don Imus, whatever else he may be, lacks an unlimited desire for professional suicide.

He knows when the only substance offered is the charge.  He may privately love it, but publicly avoids supporting bypassing the middle man and just going straight from the accusation to the lynching rope.

Do you sit there watching Bob Schieffer in the evening, and actually believe what he says?

(LL)

© 2005 Oregon Magazine