Do they know?

In 2004 during the Democratic Convention, I found myself at the home of a diehard FoxNews watcher. There was no possibility of watching the convention on another channel.

I really wanted to see the speakers, to follow what the Democratic party was presenting to the country in what seemed to me to be a critical election. The war, the war, the war. That was my primary reason for becoming active in the election - registering voters, going door to door, stuffing envelopes (literally), making calls, whatever I, a total novice at political engagement could find to do. The Iraq war, in my mind was a disaster. Thousands of American members of our military were dying, thousands more coming home with missing limbs, traumatic brain injuries, PTSD.

Someone I knew was a member of the National Guard and was deployed as a medic. Three times the vehicle he was riding in was blown up by an IED, all three times there were severe injuries, in one attack, a soldier in the vehicle was killed.

National Guard: Service in the War on Terror

Meanwhile, my friend's wife struggled at home trying to keep their four children on track, to deal with their worries and nightmares about whether they would see their father again or if he too would be killed. She found taking care of everything that goes into daily life in a family of four children aged five to fourteen by herself was a lot harder than she thought it was going to be. "I'll never again complain that he's not doing enough to help," she told me. "I realize every day how much he was contributing, now that he's not here."

When he came home, it was a struggle for everyone. He spent hours every day jogging. Friends remarked that he seemed to show little emotion, that he was changed from the outgoing, friendly person they had always known. He was distant. The children, who had always impressed me as some to the nicest, most interesting, and most well-behaved children I had ever known, started struggling.

After he had been home for about six months, his wife finally managed to to convince him to go to Ft Hood to be evaluated for PTSD. He had PTSD. Treatment helped.

But it would always be there. He had been changed. His children and his wife had a hole in their lives - the time in their lives when he should have been home, at the supper table, goofing around with the kids, sleeping next to his wife at night.

And for what? Because Saddam Hussein was a bad guy? Seriously? Even George Bush said Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11, seemed insulted when a reporter asked a question that implied that Bush had said so at some point. Iraq was the only country in the Middle East where Al Qaida was not active - Saddam and Bin Laden were archenemies. Bin Laden thought Saddam was a heretic who had betrayed Islam, Saddam thought Bin Laden was a religious fanatic who posed a threat to his dictatorship.

So why? Why did my friend and his family and thousands of American service people pay the price they paid? For what? I swear, I still have not heard a good answer to that.

And what about the Iraqi people. Millions of people who simply got up every morning, got their kids ready for school, went to work, came home and cooked supper . . . just like people all over the world, but trying to do it while dealing with shortages and poverty caused by sanctions, with the daily anxiety that must be a fact of life when living under a dictatorship, and then, suddenly bombs are falling all around them, on their homes, on their children.

Excerpts from Iraq, the Human Cost

• The Iraq Ministry of Health at the same time as the second Hopkins study, found 400,000 excess deaths, 151,000 by violence.

• The number of displaced persons, both internal (within Iraq) and external (refugees, mainly in Jordan and Syria) ranged from estimates of 3.5 million to 5 million or more, which were directly attributable to the war. According UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, the total number of internally displaced equals more than 1.3 million, and the number of refugees exceeds 1.4 million. 

• Health-related impacts on children in Iraq, from the Brussels Tribunal and Global Research, Canada, describes the broad effects on children, including birth defects, cancer, inadequate nutrition . . .

• "Within less than a decade, the occurrence of congenital birth defects increased by an astonishing 17-fold."

And for what? For what? Why?

How could any of us sit idly by and do nothing to stop this insane destruction? The destruction of bodies, of minds, of families, of our own military and of ordinary people in Iraq? 

I wanted to hear how the Democrats were going to stop this insanity. How were they making the case to the country, to the voters, that the insanity must stop?

But where I was, I couldn't see any of that. The speakers were tiny and far away in the background. You could see someone was speaking, but there was no audio of what they were saying. In the foreground was Bill O'Reilly and a couple of others like he him he was talking to, and all they talked about was that Teresa Heinz Kerry had said, "Shove it" to a reporter before the convention began. 

Here's what they were talking about:

 Cable news networks obsess over Teresa Heinz Kerry comment

On July 26, the cable news networks devoted extensive air time to Teresa Heinz Kerry's exchange with an employee of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a conservative daily newspaper owned by Richard Mellon Scaife (known as the “Funding Father of the Right” ), who paid for the controversial anti-Clinton Arkansas Project.

That's all FoxNews viewers could see or hear about the Democratic Convention.

This is what they didn't hear: From the LA Times

“When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going,” Obama said. “And to never -- ever -- go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace and earn the respect of the world.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, one of the administration’s most vociferous critics, called the war “misguided,” and said that “instead of making America more secure,” the administration’s politics “have made us less so.”

And so, as Trump's trial in the Senate is now underway, I listened to FoxNews in the midst of it and I heard nothing about what happened in Ukraine. Nothing about the testimony of the members of our Foreign Service, of our State Department.

Only jokes and ridicule of Nancy Pelosi's and Adam Schiff's appearance and mannerisms. Over and over again, "ridiculous witch hunt," "Trump did nothing wrong," "Democrats just hate him because liberals are haters, that's the main thing that motivates them, that's all they've got, hatred. Hatred of America and everything it stands for." And on and on. Just that.

So when I see

I think, well of course not. Everything that the rest of us - those who learn about what is happening in the world from a variety of sources, not just FoxNews - know about this whole sordid story, Republicans, including Republican Senators apparently, don't know anything about it. 

We read the news articles, watched or listened to the testimony . . . they didn't.

As always, it's critically important to FoxNews that their viewers don't see for themselves and make up their on minds. They must only know what FoxNews tells them, and that is going to be very little.

Fox News Really Doesn’t Want You to Tune Into Trump’s Impeachment Trial

“It was unbelievably boring. I don’t know how people can follow it.”

That same strategy appears to be playing out on Fox News, which went to great lengths to convince viewers that the trial wasn't worth their attention. 

"Unbelievably boring" is how Fox & Friends Steve Doocy described the first day. "we watched it so you don't have to watch the entire thing," Pete Hegseth told viewers. 

As warranted, we will dip in and out, but we're not going to torture you," Hannity said. He then paused to highlight Trump's lawyers, whose performances Hannity praised ad "excellent."

So as I watch the Senate trial and I hear Republicans still saying this is just a witch hunt, that Trump did nothing wrong, and I think, how on earth can they say that? Don't they know what he did?

And the answer is . . .

No. They don't.

Impeachment Manager Hakeem Jeffries:



And now you know.