The Real Question That Never Gets Answered

Some of us want to beat Al Qaeda first and foremost. Some of us want to beat Republicans first and foremost, so they can respond proudly when their children ask, "Daddy, what did you do in the War Against Bush?"

Here's a chick with a pair.........an excerpt from CNN today on "Reliable Sources" with UPI reporter Pamela Hess:

KURTZ: Pam Hess, has the sending of 20,000 additional troops gotten a fair hearing in the media or has it gotten caught up in this wrenching, emotional debate about whether the war itself was a mistake?

PAM HESS: I think it's gotten caught up about it, and the debate about it is actually all wrong. What reporters know and what Martha says is that 20,000 really isn't that big -- isn't that big a jump. We're at 132,000 right now. It's going to put us even less that we had going in going across the line.

What we're not asking is actually the central question. We're getting distracted by the shiny political knife fight. What we need to be asking is, what happens if we lose? And no one will answer that question. If we lose, how are we going to mitigate the consequences of this?

It's so much easier for us to cover this as a political horse race. It's on the cover of "The New York Times" today, what this means for the '08 election. But we're not asking the central national security question, because it seems that if as a reporter you do ask the national security question, all of a sudden you're carrying Bush's water. There are national security questions at stake, and we're ignoring them and the country is getting screwed.

Better that the story should be missed, and the country screwed, than that a reporter might look unacceptably friendly to Bush!

How about an occasional story about the actual war itself, and the consequences of losing it?

And this......

What if U.S. just pulled out of Iraq?