2004 Presidential Election
The Rocky Mountain News editorial staff is advising President Bush to release all of the photos and video around the prison scandal in Iraq [May 11, 2004, "Release the images, no matter how awful"]. From the editorial, "Some of the images may have to be withheld to protect the rights of defendants and some, although this seems doubtful, may involve national security. But if the United States is to regain its credibility, it should do, to use another Washington term for dealing with scandal, a "document dump." The damage to U.S. moral authority is already done; it can't get much worse. But allowing the photos to dribble out in ones and twos, as they likely will in any case and surely will if they are turned over to Congress but not the public, will only prolong the agony. Moreover, there is a strong case to be made that Americans simply deserve to know how far some of their troops descended into barbaric behavior. Most of us are not about to judge the majority of U.S. soldiers in Iraq by the transgressions of a few, but we do want to know the full, ugly truth regarding that small minority."
Mike Littwin weighs in on the release of the photos in his column in today's Rocky [May 11, 2004, "Littwin: Forget Janet Jackson, real porn's in Iraq prison"]. Says Littwin, "Of course, this is an administration for which full disclosure is not exactly a familiar tactic. Start with the ban on photographing coffins coming home from Iraq. This is supposedly a privacy issue, as opposed to the real issue - dead Americans on the living room TV screen. Look at the reaction to Ted Koppel's decision to read the list of the dead. And we don't even concern ourselves counting Iraqis. There's no hiding behind privacy anymore. There are rules of scandal engagement, after all. As John McCain says, 'Look, one thing I know about scandals: They go on and on until the American people feel they have a full and complete picture of what happened.' And when we get that complete picture, we'll understand Paul Bremer's lesson on occupation: The only thing worse than being occupied is being the occupier."
President Bush is hitting the streets to defend his education initiatives, including No Child Left Behind, according to the Denver Post [May 11, 2004, "Bush begins 3-day education tour"]. From the article, "Signed in 2003, the No Child Left Behind education law was the centerpiece of Bush's domestic policy agenda. It mandated tough testing and gave all students until 2014 to become proficient in reading and math. The legislation had bipartisan backing but has run into opposition from Democrats who claim Bush is enforcing the law on the cheap. Teachers unions argue that the president is taking credit for actions by Congress, which increased funding levels for education over and above what the president requested the past few years. The law requires states to chart adequate yearly progress - not just for a school's overall population, but for groups such as minorities and students who speak little English. Sanctions grow by the year for schools receiving low-income aid that don't improve enough. Consequences range from letting students transfer to a better school within their districts to transferring control of a poor-performing school to the state."
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