Stuff Ben Wrote
this stuff is all from Ben Stein, some of it really does make you think
I am going to get straight to the point. Something is terribly wrong with media coverage of the war in Iraq. The media hysteria about Iraq and the prisoners reached a crescendo last Friday when another network breathlessly disclosed that American guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad had stomped on the toes of suspected Iraqi terrorists to make them more likely to talk about murders of Americans and innocent Iraqis in Iraq.
This toe stomping was treated as a stunning revelation of American brutality. It was added to the torrent of hysteria about photos of nude Iraqis piling on each other and a nude Iraqi being led by a woman soldier with a leash. All of this --according to the media and some in Congress --is supposed to show that America is itself a terrorist nation and that we are really no different from the terrorists.
This is dangerous nonsense.
Here is what is important. This conflict started because a group of Islamic fundamentalist mass murderers killed three thousand totally innocent civilians on September 11, 2001. We did nothing to provoke it except in the terrorists' crazy brains. We had to fight back. That's why we went into Afghanistan and used harsh methods to get answers out of captured Al Qaeda there. To prevent more 9/11's.
Does the media think you just plunk down your card on a silver tray and the terrorists talk? Do they think we get useful information out of hardened terrorists by polite questioning? What do the media think we did in Vietnam? What do they think the Israelis do to find out about terrorism? What do they think the British did in Northern Ireland? Fighting terrorists is a brutal business.
Now, we're in Iraq. Once we're there, we have to protect innocent life from terrorists. That means interrogating prisoners whom we think are terrorists. Sometimes harshly. But we are the good guys. We saved Iraq from a dictator a billion times worse than anything we do there. The people who murder our soldiers and civilians and mutilate them just because the Americans are trying to help rebuild Iraq--those killers are the bad guys.
The media plays up endlessly fraternity boy mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. Yes, it does not look good. And some of it is genuinely bad. The media goes wild about those things. But where is the fuller story? What about the thousands of Iraqis who were tortured to death, who had their eyes cut out, who were surgically mutilated, who were raped, starved, had gasoline poured down their throats and then were set on fire by the Saddam Hussein regime at the same prison? Why don't we ever hear about them? What about the Americans -- military and civilian--who have taken Iraqis mutilated by Saddam and sent them to America for prosthesis for free? Why don't we hear about them on TV?
Why don't we hear more about the families of the four U.S. contractors who were murdered and their bodies mutilated in Falluja by terrorists ? They have been totally forgotten.
Let me ask the media and the Congress a question: might it have been worth stomping on a terrorist's fingers and toes and depriving him of sleep to find out who murdered those four men in Falluja. And making sure they didn't do it again?
Media, Congress, get it straight: The US is the main repository of decency on this earth. And we are a powerful nation. The Al Qaeda can never defeat us if we are united. But we can defeat ourselves if we begin to think we are the enemy and lose our confidence in our cause.
Let's be clear: there is no moral equivalency between us and the terrorists. We're the good guys, and if we lose because we didn't play hard enough, it's the end of everything good in our world.
Hmmm. Let's see what's in the news. A huge cover story about a child actress with a billion dollars who doesn't eat enough so she's going into a clinic and her sister is in despair as she goes on vacation. Then there is a lot of ink about the marriage of another millionaire actress and whether she's pregnant. Then there are stories about two good looking young people who met on a reality dating show and now are breaking up.
The reason these people are supposedly worthy of front page covers of giant magazines is that they are "stars." And we pay a lot of attention to "stars" whether they are in front of a camera or suffering from anorexia or having babies or dropping baskets into a hoop from above the rim. We pay attention to them if they start a new line of clothes or if they decide to drive a Chrysler instead of a Cadillac. That's because they're "stars," and I'm sick of it.
A man or woman is not a "star" if he gets paid tens of millions of dollars to say lines in front of a camera. She's not a "star" if she gets paid millions to simper and look sad because an imaginary boyfriend did not call. He's not a "star" if he gets paid thousands of dollars a minute to run up and down a wooden basketball court. They may be good actors and super great athletes, but in my mind, they're not stars. The real stars, the ones who keep this country free on Independence Day and every day, are the ones who lead a patrol down an alley in Falluja with some maniac terrorist aiming an AK-47 at their heads. The real stars are the ones who leave their families behind at a dusty Army base and go off and risk--and lose--their lives to do their duty by their country and free men and women everywhere.
They're the ones who go off into Godforsaken valleys in Afghanistan hunting for Al Qaeda, never knowing if they'll ever come back, and often not coming back. Think Pat Tillman and you've pretty much got it.
There are other real stars in this country like the men and women in Walter Reed Army Hospital getting fitted with prosthetic limbs because a bomb took off their leg below the knee in Mosul, Iraq. Their wives and girlfriends and parents and kids cheering them on are real stars, too. So are the doctors and techs who make the limbs.
This country could last forever without the billionaire movie and TV stars in the magazines. We could not last a month without the men and women who fight for us. It's high time we got our priorities straight. Those guys and gals in Bagram and Ramadi and Fallujah and everywhere else, alive or dead or wounded, are the real stars, the ones who light up the night of tyranny with the light of freedom. We would not have a July 4th worth having without them. God bless them today and every day
I sat next to Al Gore and his kids and some pals of theirs at Morton's last Thursday. He looked, well, I would say sleek in a fancy silk shirt. And his children were adorable, and he was polite and friendly. But this is not about Al Gore.
On Monday, during lunch at Morton's, I was with my old pals Al Burton and Phil DeMuth, when an amazingly beautiful young blonde woman walked in. She was wearing a sheer, low-cut, very short dress--I could see her lovely young breasts right through the material. Wow, was she gorgeous. Just stunning. But this is not about Britney Spears either.
It's about what the men and women of the United States military forces are made of and just how wrong our enemies are if they think we can be beaten.
This story started about 10 months ago, when I was making a pilot of a talk show I was going to host for Warner Bros. One of the features I insisted on having in the show was a story about a brave navy wife whose husband had been at sea for a long time. Without him, she was suffering emotionally and financially.
I wanted to tell her story and give her a gift of furniture to distract her from her worries. When she came up to the set in Burbank, along with her came a beautiful woman named Shannon Kear, who almost palpably exuded a kind of Grace Kelly class. She was, it turned out, the wife of Jim Kear, captain of the USS Mobile Bay, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser then in the Pacific, on which our guest's husband was a mess-room supervisor. We had a nice visit and the segment turned out well.
A few weeks ago, I was emailed by a sailor who told me the Mobile Bay had been at sea for nine months, recently heavily involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom, firing cruise missiles at the enemy. The ship and her crew were returning to home port in San Diego.
They were about to have a welcome-home dinner dance, and they wanted me to speak, because they were aware of my frequent writing on behalf of military families. Naturally, I accepted the invitation.
The day came last Thursday. With an aide from the ship named Lt. Mike Koerner, my wife and I drove down to San Diego and met the ship's crew, their spouses, friends and girlfriends. The friendliest man there was Jim Kear, Naval Academy graduate and skipper of the Mobile Bay.
He was able to be with her for a lumpectomy and a few months afterward. Then it was off to sea.
While he introduced me to various cigarette smoking members of the crew, cryptologists, sonar technicians, weapons officers, engine room engineers, mess people and maintenance people, my wife had a long talk with Mrs. Kear.
When I reconnected with my wife, she had tears in her eyes, and here's why:
Mrs. Kear, who is from West Virginia, has been a navy wife all of her adult life. She has traveled to many ports and has had to uproot her son and teenage daughter repeatedly. She likes the life of a navy wife, the company of the other wives and the joy of homecoming, but, of course, she misses her husband terribly when he is at sea.
In 1996, when her husband was assigned to another vessel, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Luckily, he was able to be with her for a lumpectomy and to keep her company for three months afterward. Then it was off to sea again.
In the spring of 2002, Jim Kear was assigned to take over the Mobile Bay. The ship was a technological marvel and needed his high-tech attention. Jim Kear and the Mobile Bay put to sea in late summer 2002 and started intense training of the crew, all to excellent results.
I live in a world where where conversations are about who can smite whom with taller tales of wealth.
He was proud of his crew and his ship, and so was Shannon Kear. Then around Christmas of 2002, Shannon was diagnosed with a recurrence of the breast cancer. She told her husband she was going to need a radical mastectomy. He immediately offered--no, insisted--to resign the command of the ship so he could be with his wife.
Shannon replied that she would not hear of it. "You pulled this ship together," she told her husband. "The ship needs you. The navy needs you. This is what you were trained to do. I'll be all right."
Jim agonized about what to do but decided he would heed his wife and stay with his ship. Shannon had the surgery at Balboa Naval Hospital that New Year's Eve.
Who took care of her while she convalesced and had chemotherapy?
"Mostly my nineteen-year-old daughter, Whitney," she said. "She did it perfectly. Any teenage arguing and backtalk came to an end right then and there. And then my best friend from West Virginia came to stay with me, and I had wives from the ship over around the clock, cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids. That's what navy wives are like. That's why we love the navy."
I was reeling for the rest of the evening. I learned other great things about the Mobile Bay, about how well trained her crew is in the most advanced weapons systems, about how she is powered by immense jet engines that turn turbines so powerful the ship can pull water skiers.
I learned about how racial animosity aboard ship is zero and not tolerated, about how a tiny and stunningly beautiful woman named Lakeysha repairs those immense turbines and also looks amazing in heels. But mostly, I paid attention to Cpt. and Mrs. Kear. (By the way, Cpt. Kear knows the names of every single man and woman on his crew.)
I live in a world where grown men fight like tigers over half a point of imaginary profits from a movie or TV show, where conversations are about who can smite whom with taller tales of wealth and possessions, about who made more in the real-estate bubble than anyone else.
At the dinner dance for the Mobile Bay, not one person brought up money. No one bragged about his coups in property.
I toil in the world of finance, where I deal with men who blithely loot widows and orphans out of their livelihoods and go to parties and grin for the cameras of the society pages. At the dinner dance for the Mobile Bay, not one person even brought up money one single time. No one bragged about his coups in property. The men and women just bantered about their foibles and habits.
There was no bragging about Iraq, no questioning of the commander in chief, no ego at all. It occurs to me that this is the navy way, the army way, the marine and air force way: team playing to protect a nation that is often only barely aware they exist.
But they do, and without them, none of the rest of us would exist for long.
And how could the men and women of the Mobile Bay be any less than the navy ideal? The ship is led by a captain and his wife whose devotion to something bigger than themselves makes those of us with our swimming pools and our self-obsession look pretty pathetic.
The ship is crewed by men and women who won't be defeated, and this makes us, their beneficiaries, extremely blessed Americans.
On the freeway, all the way back to Los Angeles, I kept thinking of the Navy Hymn, which goes something like this:
"Eternal Father, strong to save
Whose arm doth bind the restless wave...
Oh, hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea!"
God bless Cpt. Kear, Shannon, all those in peril on the sea for this country and their families. They are better than we deserve.
Oh, that talk-show pilot? The folks at Warner Bros. decided the nation really wanted to see more of Sharon Osbourne and did not really need to hear about military families. So, Sharon has that slot now, and I hope she does well with it. The military and their friends take care of their own.
there are more on his website, some of them are funny, some are somber (look around the time of 9/11) but all of them are good, or at least well thought out.