www.dailykos.com/story/2004/7/20/18926/6104
" Maj Stone was killed in March 2003 by a grenade that officials said was thrown into his tent by Sgt. "It's been a big shock, and we are not very happy about it, to say the least," Kandi Gallagher, Maj Stone's aunt and family spokeswoman, tells Washington Times reporter Audrey Hudson. "We are furious that Greg was in that casket and cannot defend himself, and my sister, Greg's mother, is just beside herself," Miss Gallagher said. The family does not know how Mr Moore obtained the video, and Miss Gallagher said they did not give permission and are considering legal recourse. She described her nephew as a "totally conservative Republican" and said he would have found the film to be "putrid." "I'm sure he would have some choice words for Michael Moore," she said. "Michael Moore would have a hard time asking our family for a glass of water if he were thirsty." Kopel also mentions an article quoting Jennifer Damon, the wife of Peter Damon (the soldier at Walter Reed Hospital who lost both arms in Iraq), saying that Peter hadn't given Moore permission to use the news footage of his interview with NBC. Of course that in itself means nothing one way or the other. In both cases though, without knowing the rights issues surrounding the footage, labeling either or both a 'deceit' is at this point wishful thinking on Kopel's part. Here's deceit 49a, helpfully called a 'Bonus Deceit' by Kopel: Long before Fahrenheit was released, Moore promised that he had videos of Iraqi prisoner abuse. Fahrenheit presents a video of making fun of a prostrate Iraqi. Moore told an audience, "You saw this morning the first footage of abuse and humiliation of Iraqi detainees." Fahrenheit claims: "Immoral behavior breeds immoral behavior. When a President commits the immoral act of sending otherwise good kids into a war based on a lie, this is what you get." As reported in the (Toronto) Globe and Mail: "He revealed that a scene in which American soldiers appear to be desecrating a corpse beneath a blanket may be misleading. In fact, the soldiers had picked up an old man who had passed out drunk and they poked at his visible erection, covered by a blanket." It's not very respectful to make fun of a drunk who has passed out on a street. But such teasing has nothing to do with the kind of bizarre sexual abuse perpetrated at Abu Ghraib. All over the world, law enforcement officers make fun of comatose drunks. Second, Moore's point is that abuse of power at the top has (to coin a phrase) a trickle-down effect. I'm not sure how footage of petty abuse of power at the bottom of the chain of command -- even if that's all there was -- refutes that, exactly. Third, I guess the people standing around in ominous black hoods during that footage were on their way to a costume party... I really wonder if Kopel has even bothered to watch the movie he's trying to refute. The Bush Department of Veteran's Affairs did propose closing seven hospitals in areas with declining populations where the hospitals were underutilized, and whose veterans could be served by other hospitals. Moore does not say that the Department also proposed building new hospitals in areas where needs were growing, and also building blind rehabilitation centers and spinal cord injury centers. Successful implementation of CARES will rest in large part on VA's ability to effectively manage its vacant and underutilized space. Through CARES, VA expects to reduce its current vacant and underused space by 42 percent by 2022. VA will need to improve upon its ability to manage its capital assets in order to achieve this reduction. Wow, that sure sounds like bureaucratese for "closing hospitals." The CARES Commission identified several key and interrelated areas where VA will need to improve management of capital assets. The ability to redirect savings to pay for direct care of veterans is a compelling incentive to improve. In view of the continuously rising cost of health care (providing care for a single veteran currently averages approximately $5,000/year), VA must take every opportunity for savings from reducing or eliminating maintenance of vacant or underused capital assets. "Reducing or eliminating maintenance of vacant or underused capital assets." Now, like Kopel, you can argue that those closings made the whole system more efficient, and allowed VA to open other, newer hospitals, and offer better and shinier care for all veterans. Anyone with any experience with bureaucratic 'efficiency' drives, and/or the similarly double-speak-disguised plant closings, would be skeptical of that claim though. Anyone who notes that 42% figure -- that's 42% more use of existing and surviving facilities, remember -- is going to be highly skeptical. According to Moore, Bush "tried to double the prescription drug costs for veterans." What Bush proposed was raising the prescription co-pay from $7 to $15, for veterans with incomes of over $24,000 a year. Prescription costs would have remained very heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Some, not all, veterans would have faced a doubling of their prescription co-pay, but only to a level which is common for many people with prescription insurance, and hardly a large enough increase to make a great difference in most cases. Kopel says this doesn't count as a "deceit, although important context is missing." But speaking of important context, how about the fact that the jump from $7 to $15 isn't the first increase in the co-pay the Bush administration wanted?
Bush, announces Moore, "proposed cutting combat soldiers' pay by 33%." In addition to regular military salaries, soldiers in certain areas (not just combat zones) receive an "imminent danger" bonus of $150 a month. In April 2003, Congress retroactively enacted a special increase of $75, for the fiscal year of Oct. At first, the Bush administration did not support renewing the special bonus, but then changed its position. Likewise, Congress had passed a special one-year increase in the family separation allowance (for service personnel stationed in places where their families cannot join them) from $100 to $250. Bush's initial opposition to extending the special increase was presented by Moore as "cutting assistance to their families by 60%." So from a budgetary perspective Kopel is correct -- Bush didn't want to cut pay, just prevent an increase. Of course Moore doesn't take the budgetary perspective -- he takes the soldier's perspective. And from their perspective, if Bush had gotten his way they would have gotten less money than they had the year before. Even if one characterizes not renewing a special bonus as a "cut," Fahrenheit misleads the viewer into thinking that the cuts applied to total compensation, rather than only to pay supplements which constitute only a small percentage of a soldier's income. An enlisted man with four months of experience receives an annual salary more than $27,000.
Base pay for an enlisted soldier in his first year of service would be just under $14,000 a year, about half what Kopel cites. Kopel's mind-reading aside, Moore's actual statement can be read a few ways, one of which even fits with the numbers Kopel presents. Although Moore presents Bush as cutting military pay, Bush did the opposite: in 2003, Congress enacted a Bush administration proposal to raise all military salaries by 37%, with extra "targeted" pay increases for non-commissioned officers. NCOs are lower-ranking officers who typically join the military with lower levels of education than commissioned officers. Or maybe he means December 27, the day the president signed it into law. Whatever he means, no soldier actually saw a dime of that pay increase in 2003. I'm sure Kopel didn't really mean to leave his readers with a mistaken impression about that. It does, though, cut against Moore's theme that the Bush administration pushed for a pay increase. So how about this: can we agree that this part of F9/11 is only slightly more accurate than any Bush campaign ad that mentions Kerry's Senate voting record, and on a par with Kopel's critique? Early in this segment, Moore states that "out of the 535 members of Congress, only one had an enlisted s...
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