9 June 2004
Specator
Donn Esmonde's finger, Reagan's wars, Rummy's tickets
Donn Esmonde's finger
The Spectator marvels at the recent meandering of the self-proclaimed voice of the community, Donn Esmonde. He points the finger of blame at Bill Greiner for UB's retreat from the City of Buffalo but fails to mention the crushing hand of the Buffalo News in sending the Buffalo Bills to Orchard Park and thus, doing more to empty downtown bars, restaurants, and hotels. Esmonde is showing more signs of dementia than John Ashcroft these days. He recently paid homage to the "conscience of the community" Richard Kern, blithefully passing over Kern's frequent, fallacious personal attacks. Kern responded in kind by claiming that the city animal shelter was being closed because of a lesbian feud involving the Mayor's chief of staff. Perhaps the best we can hope for is laryngitis for the voice and amnesia for the conscience.
Reagan's warsIn the national rush to canonize Ronald Reagan we seem to have forgotten his proclivity for sound stage diplomacy - a policy that got 241 Marines killed in Beirut for no earthly reason. Reagan thought real life was like the movies - send in the Marines and everything will be fine. Well, he sent in the Marines but they were not allowed to load their weapons. So when the suicide car bomb drove up to the building serving as Marine barracks, the best the sentries could do was holler "halt!" A command voice wasn't enough and good, decent kids died for nothing. To assuage his guilt, Ronnie then went after Grenada to get at least one win under his belt. You will recall Grenada was the "war" where the number of medals outnumbered the troops who invaded the country.
Rummy's unused first class ticketsThe Bushites are making a lot of fun of John Kerry's votes regarding the funding for the war in Iraq. Overlooked is their own failure to adequately equip, train, and staff up for a two-front war. As a result of troop shortages in Iraq, soldiers are being transferred from South Korea, where they were confronting the threat of a country bragging about possessing the same weapons of mass destruction Bush insisted were in Iraq. While the Spectator wrestles with that contradictory proposition, we find out from the Washington Post (6/9/04) that the Rumsfeld Defense Department has pissed away about hundred million dollars buying airline tickets that were never used, paying for first class tickets when coach seats were called for, and failing to seek refunds on tickets that were refundable. Some 68,000 first class seats have been paid for by the Pentagon. The General Accounting Office also pointed out the potential for employee fraud in the millions of dollars. Do you, like the Spectator, wonder how much body armor might have been purchased with all this money? How many lives might have been saved? How many vehicles might have been armored against the explosive roadside bombs?
Copyright 2004 by Buffalo Report, Inc.