[linskyjack]

I know this is just one fairly moderate market, but this is nevertheless, interesting. I suspect that people are starting to get tired of the divisiveness of the Bush administration shill, Limbaugh and Hannity. I think this reflects the disgust that both Republicans and Democrats have for this administration and its failed policies. By the way, if you have a chance, read George Will's column in the Washinton Post or your syndicated local paper. It's a rather scathing view of Rumsfeld's --sorry, I mean Bush's--foreign policy. To have the godfather of conservative journalists write this, doesn't bode well for Cheny's -sorry I mean Bush's----administration



Twin Cities turning deaf ear to political talk radio shows
Deborah Caulfield Rybak, Star Tribune
August 20, 2005 RADIO0820



Twin Cities listeners have been tuning out political talk radio.

Locally, conservative-talk icon Rush Limbaugh's show has lost 43 percent of its audience among 25- to 54-year-olds in the past year. Sean Hannity's show is down a whopping 63 percent. The shift is serious enough that "we're weighing where these shows fit for us in the future," according to Todd Fisher, general manager at KSTP (1500 AM), which carries both syndicated programs.

Many Americans also are switching the dial. While ratings for political talk radio typically drop the year after an election, experts around the country sense something else in the air. Many metro listeners are turning to local, often sports-oriented shows.

"We're not sure yet what's really going on," said talk radio veteran Ken Kohl, Clear Channel's director of news and talk programming for northern California. "In general, the talk shows that are succeeding are ones that haven't been reliving the election, or constantly harping on the polarization between liberals and conservatives."

Kohl thinks many listeners have tuned out because of "war fatigue. I don't think a lot of people want to talk or hear about the war at this point."

Tom Taylor, editor of the industry newsletter Inside Radio, maintains that for political moderates, who make up most of the radio audience, "there's not much that's attention-grabbing. Tom Cruise has grabbed more attention this summer than the war."

He may have a point. Celebrity-obsessed magazines are the single bright spot in an otherwise gloomy environment for the media industry, based on recent circulation surveys.

Shift to sports

Locally, listeners tuned into sports in greater numbers this spring. Weekday ratings at sports-talk station KFAN (1130 AM) are up 37 percent among listeners ages 25 to 54 compared with a year ago, while KSTP-AM is down 33 percent.

A look at individual shows reflects much sharper contrasts. Limbaugh's show, which airs Monday through Friday from noon to 3 p.m. on KSTP, dropped from a 7.6 percent share of listeners ages 25 to 54 in spring 2004 to 4.3 this spring. Sean Hannity's 6-8 p.m. show dropped from 6.3 to 2.3 percent.

In contrast, KFAN has seen its afternoon lineup of Dan (Common Man) Cole, Chad Hartman and Dan Barreiro post audience gains of 24 to 32 percent. Both WCCO (830 AM) and KFAN have made gains in the 26 to 29 percent range during the 6-8 p.m. time period.

What may be of particular concern to KSTP executives is the impact on shows such as Joe Soucheray's popular "Garage Logic," which airs after Limbaugh's show and has dropped in the ratings as well. Local partisan talker Chris Krok, whose show follows Hannity's, has less than 1 percent of the age-25-to-54 audience, too low to even register a rating point.

"We are giving a lot of consideration to the nationally syndicated shows like Rush and Hannity," said KSTP's Fisher. "We have really become concerned with what I would call their tight play list of topics revolving around politics. We respect them and they've done well for us, but we're really in a quandary here."

Local appeal

It isn't just a matter of politics, said Carol Grothem, broadcast manager for the Campbell Mithun ad agency. She suggested listeners may be turning more toward local talent and issues, and away from syndicated shows.

She pointed to healthy ratings for WCCO and its afternoon and morning drive-time hosts: "Don Shelby had good numbers and Dave Lee is consistent. I think local is what listeners want."

Fisher said KSTP wants to focus more on "local content and dynamic personalities that can really do more than 'us-versus-them' commentary."

The ratings shift hasn't affected partisan radio stations such as WWTC (1280 AM), known as the Patriot, or KTNF (950 AM), home to Air America programming, including Al Franken's weekday show. Both have maintained relatively stable, if small, audience shares of about 1 to 1.5 percent.

Franken is an exception, however. Locally, the Minnesota native has increased his audience share to 2.4 percent of listeners ages 25 to 54, compared with 1.3 last year.

Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers Magazine, thinks the post-election drop is still the biggest factor in the fluctuating ratings -- but stay tuned, he said:

"A lot of people in political talk radio are still on that left- versus-right formula because it's been working. You can be sure that if it continues to show a decline in ratings, they'll alter the course."

[A_erised]

Many years ago I listened faithfully to Rush just so my nephews and I could debate the topics and viewpoints presented.

All but one nephew stopped many years ago. Rush was not someone whose opinion I would ever personally seek out on any topic, so not one whose opinion I valued. I still have one nephew who will from time to time call and say, hey you ought to be listening. I will humor him tune in, but my nephew and I we usually don't agree. I think if that lad were ever to vote for a democrat, or any democratic endorsed article the world would be at a stand still. LOL

So Linsky am I getting tired, no. I got tired long ago.

[Gabriel]

The mere grating of his voice wore my ears out from the gate....felt like he was forcefeeding with his vocals. NO THANKS

[linskyjack]

The guy never has debate on his show---You seldom to ever hear an opposing view by someone who knows what they are talking about. Its just three hours of furthering the right wing agenda and I guess it gets a little boring. Beyond that, pretty much everything the blowhard has expoused about this administration has been proven wrong. He looks to create problems when none exist----By the way, does anyone know how the oxycodine popping drug addict is doing vis a vis the law. I recall that on one occasion he said that drug users should do time---Well Rush---what about you?

[bassetman]

I saw that article in the Minneapolis Trib.

Good for MN!

[LuckyStrike]

I rarely listen to radio, but I occasionally hear them when taking a road trip until I drive out of the range of WLS. Since I rarely hear them, no I am not getting tired of them. They are entertaining. Many others must think they are entertaining also since they are both commercial successes while Air America has to embezzle funds from boys and girls clubs to survive.

[poochee]

Both are sarcastic, loud mouth, rude playground bullies. I suspect their success has gone to their heads.

You are free to assume I don't care for them.

[bassetman]

Originally Posted by poochee

Both are sarcastic, loud mouth, rude playground bullies. I suspect their success has gone to their heads.

You are free to assume I don't care for them.

[Mulderator]

As the Great Majaraji (sp?) would say, time for a dose of truth for the liberals!

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050725/lam108.html?.v=16

Rush Limbaugh Continues to Consistently Beat Liberal Talkers at Ratings Game
Monday July 25, 9:13 pm ET
- Numbers Don't Lie -


LOS ANGELES, July 25 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the Arbitron Spring 2005 ratings survey for Boston, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Washington D.C., Mr. Rush Limbaugh consistently continues to beat liberal talkers. In Boston, Mr. Rush Limbaugh's Persons 12+ audience is 16 times larger than Mr. Al Franken's audience and for Adults 25-54, his audience is 11 times greater than Mr. Franken's. Heard Monday through Friday on WRKO-AM from noon - 3 p.m., "The Rush Limbaugh Show" scored, among Persons 12+, a 4.5 share with an average quarter-hour audience of 34,200 listeners. Among Adults 25-54, he has a 3.5 share with an average quarter-hour audience of 14,800 listeners. Mr. Al Franken, who airs at the same time on WKOX-AM in Boston, has a Persons 12+ share of 0.3 with an average quarter-hour audience of 2,100 listeners. With Adults 25-54, he has a 0.3 share with an average quarter-hour audience of 1,300 listeners. Mr. Jerry Springer also airs on WKOX-AM, but his audience totals did not meet the minimum reporting standard set for that market by Arbitron.

In addition to Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Franken, below are numbers for liberal talker Mr. Ed Shultz, who broadcasts in a different timeslot:

Host Share Avg. Quarter Hour Rank (all AM/FM
(Persons 12+) (Persons 12+) programming-
persons 12+)
Rush Limbaugh 4.5 34,200 8
Al Franken 0.3 2,100 43
Ed Shultz 0.3 2,300 43

Host Share Avg. Quarter Hour Rank (all AM/FM
(Adults 25-54) (Adults 25-54) programming-
adults 25-54)
Rush Limbaugh 3.5 14,800 11
Al Franken 0.3 1,300 44
Ed Shultz 0.4 1,800 35



In San Francisco, "The Rush Limbaugh Show" is heard Monday through Friday on KSFO-AM from 9 a.m. - noon and scored a Persons 12+ share of 5.2 with an average quarter-hour audience of 57,100 listeners. Among Adults 25-54, he holds a 2.7 share with an average quarter-hour audience of 17,100 listeners. Mr. Franken, who airs at the same time on KQKE-AM, scored among Persons 12+ a 1.9 share with an average quarter-hour audience of 21,300 listeners. Among Adults 25-54, his share is 1.5 with an average quarter-hour audience of 9,300 listeners. Mr. Limbaugh's audience is nearly triple the size of Mr. Franken's audience for Persons 12+.

In addition to Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Franken, here are the numbers for Mr. Shultz, who broadcasts at a different time:




Host Share Avg. Quarter Hour Rank (all AM/FM
(Persons 12+) (Persons 12+) programming-
persons 12+)
Rush Limbaugh 5.2 57,100 3
Al Franken 1.9 21,300 19
Ed Shultz 1.4 14,600 25

Host Share Avg. Quarter Hour Rank (all AM/FM
(Adults 25-54) (Adults 25-54) programming-
adults 25-54)
Rush Limbaugh 2.7 17,100 10
Al Franken 1.5 9,300 24
Ed Shultz 0.7 4,500 34



In Sacramento, "The Rush Limbaugh Show," heard Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. - noon on KFBK-AM, is the #1 radio show in the timeslot for Persons 12+. Mr. Limbaugh scored a Persons 12+ share of 9.9 with an average quarter- hour audience of 32,800 listeners. Among Adults 25-54, he has a 5.8 share with an average quarter-hour audience of 11,400 listeners. Mr. Franken, who airs at the same time on KSAC-AM, scored among Persons 12+ a 1.2 share with an average quarter-hour audience of 4,100 listeners. Among Adults 25-54, his share is 1.0 with an average quarter-hour audience of 1,900 listeners. Mr. Shultz does not have an affiliate in this market.

Mr. Limbaugh wins again in Washington D.C. as he draws six times more audience than Mr. Franken. "The Rush Limbaugh Show," heard Monday through Friday on WMAL-AM from noon - 3 p.m., scored a Persons 12+ share of 5.1 with an average quarter-hour audience of 35,500 listeners. Among Adults 25-54, he holds a 2.7 share with an average quarter-hour audience of 11,000 listeners. Mr. Franken, who airs at the same time on WWRC-AM, scored among Persons 12+ a 0.9 share with an average quarter-hour audience of 5,900 listeners. Among Adults 25-54, his share is 0.6 with an average quarter-hour audience of 2,400 listeners.

In addition to Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Franken, here are the numbers for Mr. Shultz, who broadcasts at a different time:




Host Share Avg. Quarter Hour Rank (all AM/FM
(Persons 12+) (Persons 12+) programming-
persons 12+)
Rush Limbaugh 5.1 35,500 3
Al Franken 0.9 5,900 27
Ed Shultz 0.4 2,900 34

Host Share Avg. Quarter Hour Rank (all AM/FM
(Adults 25-54) (Adults 25-54) programming-
adults 25-54)
Rush Limbaugh 2.7 11,000 14
Al Franken 0.6 2,400 34
Ed Shultz 0.4 1,700 36



Known as the media pundit who reshaped the political landscape with his entertaining and informative brand of conservatism, Mr. Limbaugh is also widely credited with resuscitating AM radio by many industry experts.

[linskyjack]

LOL---liberal talk radio! Now how long has that been around?

[ekim68]

Republicans sang a different tune when Bill Clinton was President.

Res Publica [blog] has gathered together a handy list of quotes, made by Republicans during the Kosovo campaign. Any Democrat who cannot recite these from memory, forwards and backwards, has no business representing his party to the media. None whatever. ---Mary O'Grady

"You can support the troops but not the president" ---Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)

"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy." ---Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy." ---Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)

"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy." --- Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W. Bush

"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area." ---Senator
Trent Lott (R-MS)

"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years." ---Joe Scarborough (R-FL)
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today" ---Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?" ---Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99


"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." ---Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

Good grief...

[poochee]

Originally Posted by ekim68

Republicans sang a different tune when Bill Clinton was President.

Res Publica [blog] has gathered together a handy list of quotes, made by Republicans during the Kosovo campaign. Any Democrat who cannot recite these from memory, forwards and backwards, has no business representing his party to the media. None whatever. ---Mary O'Grady

"You can support the troops but not the president" ---Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)

"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy." ---Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy." ---Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)

"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy." --- Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W. Bush

"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area." ---Senator
Trent Lott (R-MS)

"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years." ---Joe Scarborough (R-FL)
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today" ---Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?" ---Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99


"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." ---Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

Good grief...

Should I think hypocrites?

[bassetman]

Originally Posted by Mulder

As the Great Majaraji (sp?) would say, time for a dose of truth for the liberals!

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050725/lam108.html?.v=16

Digging for the roots of 9/11 attacks

BY GLENN GARVIN

ggarvin@herald.com


• Dead Wrong, 8-9 tonight, CNN.

• Inside 9/11, 9-11 tonight, National Geographic Channel.

Inside 9/11 opens with a montage of forbidding but familiar images: grim firemen charging through swirling smoke into the skyscrapers, pallid victims sprawled on a carpet of broken rubble, white sheets waving hopelessly from windows hundreds of feet in the air. It's a shock when the narrator intones the date: Feb. 26, 1993. This footage is not from Sept. 11, but the first attack on the buildings, nearly nine years earlier.

The deliberate confusion is purposeful: The point of Inside 9/11 is that the story of Sept. 11 began many, many years before, and even now is nowhere near its end. It's an argument bookended in Dead Wrong, a CNN documentary on the intelligence failure that led the CIA to assure President Bush it was ''a slam dunk'' that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That blunder could echo through American foreign policy for years to come. As one weary intelligence official predicts in Dead Wrong, if Washington goes to the United Nations some day to warn that Iran has nuclear weapons, 'the answer is going to be, `You said that before.' ''

After a summer of discarded trash and brain-dead reality shows, television finally serves up something serious tonight: three hours of thoughtful examination of U.S. foreign policy, spread across two cable networks. Neither is perfect -- far from it -- but both are important viewing at a time when we're embroiled in what Inside 9/11 aptly calls ''a war with no front lines, no uniforms, and no mercy'' that has only sporadically engaged the attention of the U.S. public. As a former CIA official interviewed during Inside 9/11 gloomily observes: ``I don't think the American people have a good idea of what a long and bloody road this is going to be.''

AMBITIOUS DOCUMENTARY

Inside 9/11, a two-part documentary that concludes Monday night, is by far the more ambitious of the two programs. Its first two hours probe the origins of not just the plot to attack the World Trade Center but the entire holy war of Islamic radicals against the West, going back 25 years. The second episode is a harrowing, heartbreaking minute-by-minute account of the morning of Sept. 11, including rarely heard tapes of a call from a flight attendant aboard one of the doomed planes and radio transmissions from firemen inside the towers. National Geographic is so proud of the show that it's making it available free to cable systems that don't ordinarily carry the channel.

That pride is warranted: Inside 9/11 may be the most comprehensive account of the Sept. 11 attacks yet attempted, not only on television but in print as well, including the politically truncated report of the government's 9/11 Commission. As story-telling, it has moments of brilliance as it juggles the multiple storylines, characters and political currents that intersected that day at the World Trade Center.

GLARING OMISSIONS

But Inside 9/11 also suffers from some glaring omissions and stupefying analytical lapses. There's no mention of the fact that the FBI had an informant inside the bin Laden cell that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, but lost him in a fight over pay before he could learn the details of the plot. Nor that the CIA was was watching two of the hijackers months before Sept. 11, but let them enter the United States without telling anyone. Nor that FBI agents in Minnesota begged the bureau in vain to approve wiretaps on a radical Islamic aviation student in Minnesota who alarmed his instructors by telling them he didn't want to learn to take off or land a plane, only to operate it while in the air.

Most curiously, Inside 9/11 takes the position that bin Laden himself got involved with the Sept. 11 plot only in 1996, despite clear evidence that his participation began years earlier -- a bit of spin that seems intended to make some of the early FBI slipups look less damaging.

Those weaknesses, paradoxically, stem from from one of the show's major strengths: the willingness to walk the story backward for decades. Too many accounts of Sept. 11 -- including that of the government's 9/11 Commission -- pay little attention to anything that happened before 1998, when bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania first introduced Americans to the name Osama bin Laden.

That short timeline has distorted American political debate and distracted attention from the long series of failures by intelligence and law enforcement agencies -- some of them arguably triggered by misplaced ethnic and religious sensitivities -- stretching back more than 10 years before Sept. 11. Even more dangerously, it has led too many Americans (including some government officials) to underestimate the patience and implacability of Islamic radicals. They declared war on us long before we returned the favor, and as Inside 9/11 makes clear, peace is nowhere at hand.

U.S.-BACKED GUERRILLAS

Inside 9/11 tracks the political origins of the Sept. 11 attacks to the U.S.-backed guerrilla resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Most historians have regarded the defeat of the Soviet army as a decisive American victory in the Cold War, but the volunteers -- including bin Laden -- who streamed into the ranks of the mujahideen from all over the Muslim world saw it as triumph of Islamic holy war over infidels. ''After Afghanistan, nothing in the world is impossible for us anymore,'' says one quoted in Inside 9/11.

In 1990, when the Saudi government turned not to the Islamic radicals but to U.S. troops when it needed protection from Saddam Hussein, the target became America itself. Inside 9/11 traces a steady drumbeat of jihadist conspiracies -- the murder of Jewish extremist Meier Kahane, the first attack on the World Trade Center, a nipped-in-the-bud plot to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners -- that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies saw as a series of separate events but were in fact a web of interconnected conspiracies with bin Laden at the center.

Inside 9/11's doggedness in cataloging the early plots and the inept FBI response -- after the Kahane murder, the bureau seized 47 boxes of al Qaeda documents, but stuffed them away in a warehouse without translating anything -- makes what was left out all the more puzzling.

SECOND EPISODE

But the errors of the first episode of Inside 9/11 are more than atoned for in the riveting second episode, which dispenses with politics for an anguished account of what happened inside the hijacked airplanes and their targets on the ground.

Whether it's documenting the confusion of civil and military aviation authorities (who concede they learned more from watching TV that morning than they did through official channels) or the sick terror of the passengers aboard the planes (who were vomiting from the erratic flying as well as the sight of stabbed flight attendants bleeding to death in the aisles) or the nightmarish scene in the upper floors of the twin towers (where survivors found themselves walking on carpets of corpses), the second night of Inside 9/11 is an unstintingly personal journey straight into hell, ultimately as haunting as the end of ground control's telephone conversation with a flight attendant on board one of the planes: What's going on, Betty? Betty, talk to me. Betty, are you there? . . .

`DEAD WRONG'

There's no way Dead Wrong can match the emotional wallop of Inside 9/11, but it's an intellectually engaging account of the central conundrum of intelligence agencies: You can influence policy only if you have access to the president, but if you tell the president things he doesn't want to hear, you might lose access.

The conflict has colored the relationship between every modern American president and his intelligence chiefs, leading to fatal miscalculations in everything from Kennedy's Bay of Pigs invasion to Clinton's disastrous military adventures in Somalia. Several former officials interviewed in Dead Wrong say it struck once again during intelligence-agency conflicts over how to interpret ambiguous evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, particularly a dispute over whether the aluminum tubes Saddam Hussein was buying were to be used to make rockets (not so bad) or nuclear weapons (awful beyond belief).

'It would have been been more accurate for the intelligence community to say, `Boss, we don't know what's going on here. There are some indications that they may be working on their nuclear program. But don't ask us to go up and prove that,' '' says Carl Ford, Bush's former assistant secretary of state for intelligence.

Dead Wrong could have profited from broadening its scope to inquire more into the nature of intelligence agencies. For instance, it notes several times that the CIA always seemed to go with the worst-case scenario in trying to figure out what Saddam was up to. But isn't that what intelligence agencies are supposed to do? The CIA was explicitly created to avoid another Pearl Harbor. How can it do that without imagining worst cases? It's a question that goes unasked in Dead Wrong.

Still, it's hard to dislike a program that manages to blend intellectual weight and a piquant sense of humor. One former intelligence official, noting that Colin Powell was led astray by information from an unproven Defense Intelligence Agency source codenamed Curve Ball, wonders if it was just a labeling problem: 'Maybe the name of the agent wasn't alarming enough. Maybe it should have been `Screwup' or 'A Lying Sack of Manure.'


''http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/12431724.htm

[bassetman]

Originally Posted by ekim68

Republicans sang a different tune when Bill Clinton was President.

Res Publica [blog] has gathered together a handy list of quotes, made by Republicans during the Kosovo campaign. Any Democrat who cannot recite these from memory, forwards and backwards, has no business representing his party to the media. None whatever. ---Mary O'Grady

"You can support the troops but not the president" ---Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)

"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy." ---Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy." ---Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)

"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy." --- Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W. Bush

"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area." ---Senator
Trent Lott (R-MS)

"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years." ---Joe Scarborough (R-FL)
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today" ---Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?" ---Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99



"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." ---Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

Good grief...

[RSM123]

As a Brit,

I am interested to know which way American readers here see the 2008 vote going ? Do you see a Democrat victory in the Presidential elections ? Who will control Congress after the next mid term elections ?

The coverage we get here either BBC or independent - is always going to be influenced by someone's personal opinion.

FWIW - The opinion of Pres. Bush here can be summarised as a puppet - with Dick Cheny as puppetmaster.