Bear Left!: True Patriotism

"It is not an accident that stories about Ellsberg often emphasize the office in which the White House "plumbers" searched for information to smear his good name and taint him in perpetuity. The historical facts—that he was a former U.S. Marine company commander, a man with a history of anti-communism, a staunch supporter of American foreign policy, a Pentagon insider before he was antiwar—are often obscured. Ellsberg risked spending his life in jail to make the Pentagon Papers available to the American people and the world.

"Juxtapose Ellsberg's patriotism with the so-called patriotism displayed at Fordham University recently during the taping of Chris Matthews' MSNBC show, Hardball. Fordham is a Jesuit university located in the Bronx. Matthews' guest, John McCain, was promoting himself and the Bush line on Iraq. Matthews asked supporters of a war against Iraq to indicate that support by a show of applause. More than half of the crowd in the auditorium, mostly students, went into a wild frenzy. Matthews then asked the supporters to stand up if they were personally willing to go to Iraq to fight that war. One lone man stood up. A few others followed after more than a pregnant pause, undoubtedly realizing they were not actually being recruited. Matthews told McCain, a man who spent five years in a POW camp, that this was a war whose supporters wanted someone else to do the fighting for them. I have never seen McCain so uncomfortable. The foundation on which Bush will go to war is the support of a fraternity of chickenhawks of which he is a charter member. McCain and John Kerry do themselves a disservice by lending their good names, and prior military records, to Bush's cause."

McCain still came off as an honorable man, which is more than I can say for Bush.