Reply #23: My questions... [View All]

[Ducklord]

This is the email I sent to MTP...

Mr. Russert, et al,



Congratulations on hooking the Big Fish this weekend. Here’s hoping you can reel him in. In the interests of contributing to this fish story (not to mention stretching this fershlugginer fishing metaphor way past the breaking point), I’ve mixed up some attractive globs of bait for your consideration:



1) Mr. President, in the months before the war in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors were crawling all over the country, finding nothing. Did it ever occur to you that they might be right, and that there were, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?



2) Our military, besides being the best fighting force in the world, is also renowned for its meticulous bureaucracy. By filling out a few simple forms, members of the Army, the Navy, and the other branches of our armed forces can obtain painfully detailed records of their service to this country. Given the troubling questions that have arisen about the last year of your obligations to the National Guard, why not simply open your military records to the public, and clear up this matter once and for all?



3) In an interview a few months ago, you famously revealed to Dianne Sawyer that you don’t read newspapers. In past interviews, you’ve stated that your favorite book as a child was “The Hungry Caterpillar,” a book that wasn’t written until well after your childhood years. It’s been widely reported that you prefer to give speeches via an earpiece prompter, rather than a teleprompter. Mr. President, there is no way to put this delicately: Do you have a reading disorder?



4) Mister President, why are you and Condoleeza Rice so reluctant to testify under oath to the committee investigating 9/11?



5) Our country has been led by a number of military heroes over the years. Eisenhower, Kennedy, your father. While serving as commander-in-chief, however, none of these veterans donned military uniforms for the purposes of a photo op. In 20/20 hindsight, do you consider your “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the aircraft carrier to have been a bit tacky?



6) Mister President, why don’t you want Vice-President Cheney’s daughter to enjoy the civil benefits of marriage?



7) Mister President, when you make public appearances in this country, those that peacefully protest your policies are sequestered far from your sight, sometimes over a mile away, while those that support you are allowed to come almost within arm’s reach of you. While it’s understandable that the Secret Service has to do its job to protect you from harm, many claim that this is overkill; that your administration is attempting to keep dissenting voices from appearing on the evening news. Isn’t America as a whole supposed to be a “Free Speech Zone?”



8) In the days after 9/11, air traffic was grounded for security reasons. And yet, your administration made an exception for members of the Bin Laden family, ensuring their swift return to Saudi Arabia, homeland of most of the 9/11 hijackers. Why?



9) Between Iraq and Afghanistan our military is stretched about as thin as it can get. Members of the Reserves, who weren’t especially trained for hot zone combat, have been stationed in Iraq for nearly a year, and many are categorically stating that they absolutely will not re-up when they finally return home. Meanwhile, reports are trickling in across the country that local draft boards have begun staffing up. For the record, Mister President: If you are re-elected in 2004, will you re-instate the draft?



10) In the months leading up to the 2000 presidential election, Katherine Harris removed thousands of legally-eligible black voters from the voting rolls in Florida, tipping the contentious battleground state in your favor. How is your administration working to ensure that such electoral malfeasance does not occur in THIS year’s presidential election?



Good luck,

Mike Stemmle



PS If I’m the 10,000th yahoo to clog your email with a list of questions, do I get a MTP Coffee Mug?

-- Think any of tese questions, in any form, will escape Tim's lips?