The BBC Adds Its Own Spin to the Cindy Sheehan/Iraq War News

By now, Americans with even the most modest of attention spans know of the United Kingdom's liberal version of CNN, the BBC.  An article written by the BBC's Washington reporter Matthew Davis stunningly highlights this.

Davis's article  fairly drips with smug and self-righteous twaddle; and offers up his opinions in regard to what the American zeitgeist is regarding the war in Iraq.  In his opening paragraph, Davis states unequivocally that  "The protest of one mother, Cindy Sheehan, at the gates of President Bush's ranch has galvanised the anti-war movement."

Whereas to those that support the war, Davis pens: "But it has also spurred many families of US troops killed in Iraq to assert that her views are far removed from their own." This statement makes it sound as if anyone who disagrees with Cindy Sheehan and her methods are relegated to the families of fallen soldiers, and not the majority of the country who view Cindy Sheehan as unfavorable. 

Davis then says:  "Mr. Bush has lost no time in turning such support against those calling for a swift end to the US presence in Iraq. "  The entire sentence is unduly harsh and combative.  Further, Davis infers by that sentence that President Bush has garnered such support for the sole purpose of using it as a weapon of choice against Sheehan and company, and in principal, planned to all along.

Might the president be singling out these families that have loved ones in Iraq, including those families who have lost loved ones, to honor them?  This never occurs to Davis.

Davis then quotes the president from his speech on Monday: "We owe them something...We will finish the task that they gave their lives for."  Davis then puts away his "reporters' hat to put on his "commentary" cap:

"Such sentiments strike a chord with those who need to feel their loved ones have not made the ultimate sacrifice for a lost cause."

I found this as about as outrageous a statement I have heard in quite a while.  That Mr. Davis can even speculate so brazenly, and negatively, is every bit as repugnant as some of the very statements that Cindy Sheehan has been using. 

Finally, Davis begins his final few paragraphs with this totally ridiculous and addle-brained statement: "No one wants young men and women to die simply because others have already done so.  But there are many among the families of the fallen who are convinced by President Bush's arguments for completing the mission in Iraq."

Is this not one of the most surreal, yet troubling passages in this entire piece?  These sentences imply that President Bush predicates his Iraq policy around the dead bodies of American soldiers that have been killed in Iraq, as if there are no other points to be discussed, such as humanitarian, democratic, and terrorism concerns. 

By his words, Davis is saying to, and of, these families of fallen soldiers: "you dolts, you are only sending your children to die in Iraq because others preceded them."   But there is nothing "simple" about Iraq, except when an uninformed elitist liberal such as Matthew Davis writes about it.