This appears to be the norm on the whole Gulf Coast

I was in Gulfport, MS before, during and after Katrina. About a year after, all the rent on the coast went sky high (was paying $425 for an efficiency, raised it to $800). I was working 7 days a week at two hospitals (many MTs had already left the coast), and I had to leave too, leaving them even more short handed. There have been many articles regarding the majority of the rebuild on the coast is new casinos and high-end housing. I have no idea how they expect anyone in the service industries to live there without affordable housing. You cannot have tourist industry without people that support it - casino workers, fast food folk, maids, low-end hospital jobs.

What drove me nuts is the way they portrayed the people in the media - as if we were all illiterate crackheads. I worked with many fine people at those hospitals, and it would take pages to descibe their suffering. It disgusts me how there will always be money to accomodate the disposable income players, while the backbone of the community, hard working, serious, responsible people, were left with a trashed out house with no roof, a mortgage to pay and an insurance company that said they didn't have to give them a dime to rebuild.

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Yes, we were in Vietnam, but this lie told to the American people was when the Vietnam War actually began.

30-year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War

Media Beat Fairness in Reporting

Thirty years ago, it all seemed very clear.

American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression, announced a Washington Post headline on Aug. 5, 1964.

That same day, the front page of the New York Times reported: President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and 'certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam' after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.

But there was no second attack by North Vietnam � no renewed attacks against American destroyers. By reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.

A pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on by pliant mass media...leading to over 50,000 American deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties.

The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an unprovoked attack against a U.S. destroyer on routine patrol in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 2 � and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a deliberate attack on a pair of U.S. ships two days later.

The truth was very different.

Rather than being on a routine patrol Aug. 2, the U.S. destroyer Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers � in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force.

The day before, two attacks on North Vietnam...had taken place, writes scholar Daniel C. Hallin. Those assaults were part of a campaign of increasing military pressure on the North that the United States had been pursuing since early 1964.

On the night of Aug. 4, the Pentagon proclaimed that a second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats had occurred earlier that day in the Tonkin Gulf � a report cited by President Johnson as he went on national TV that evening to announce a momentous escalation in the war: air strikes against North Vietnam.

But Johnson ordered U.S. bombers to retaliate for a North Vietnamese torpedo attack that never happened.

Prior to the U.S. air strikes, top officials in Washington had reason to doubt that any Aug. 4 attack by North Vietnam had occurred. Cables from the U.S. task force commander in the Tonkin Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick, referred to freak weather effects, almost total darkness and an overeager sonarman who was hearing ship's own propeller beat.

One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who gained fame later as a POW and then Ross Perot's vice presidential candidate. I had the best seat in the house to watch that event, recalled Stockdale a few years ago, and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets � there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson commented: For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.

But Johnson's deceitful speech of Aug. 4, 1964, won accolades from editorial writers. The president, proclaimed the New York Times, went to the American people last night with the somber facts. The Los Angeles Times urged Americans to face the fact that the Communists, by their attack on American vessels in international waters, have themselves escalated the hostilities.

An exhaustive new book, The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam, begins with a dramatic account of the Tonkin Gulf incidents. In an interview, author Tom Wells told us that American media described the air strikes that Johnson launched in response as merely `tit for tat' � when in reality they reflected plans the administration had already drawn up for gradually increasing its overt military pressure against the North.

Why such inaccurate news coverage? Wells points to the media's almost exclusive reliance on U.S. government officials as sources of information � as well as reluctance to question official pronouncements on 'national security issues.'

Daniel Hallin's classic book The Uncensored War observes that journalists had a great deal of information available which contradicted the official account [of Tonkin Gulf events]; it simply wasn't used. The day before the first incident, Hanoi had protested the attacks on its territory by Laotian aircraft and South Vietnamese gunboats.

What's more, It was generally known...that `covert' operations against North Vietnam, carried out by South Vietnamese forces with U.S. support and direction, had been going on for some time.

In the absence of independent journalism, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution � the closest thing there ever was to a declaration of war against North Vietnam � sailed through Congress on Aug. 7. (Two courageous senators, Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, provided the only no votes.) The resolution authorized the president to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.

The rest is tragic history.

Nearly three decades later, during the Gulf War, columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Schanberg blamed not only the press but also the apparent amnesia of the wider American public.

And he added: We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.

has threatened Americans again in a new audio tape, saying President Barack Obama inflamed hatred toward the U.S. by ordering Pakistan to crack down on militants in Swat Valley and block Islamic law in the area.

You just can't win with terrorists. No matter how nice we try to be to Muslims.....the extremists are still going to hate us and want to kill us.

You crash this board and admonish my behavior, yet you can't see the same behavior on the other board. You're over there kissing up to them.

Disclaimer: I am neither a Demican nor a Republicrat. I have always voted for the guy/gal based on their stated policies, compared to actual prior performance which agrees with my mostly conservative views. (I have sort of a peripheral friend who, about four months before the election, called herself an Obamacan. Wonder how she's feeling right now.)

Having said that, I will add that I do know they all use the TelePrompTer and give speeches mostly written by professional speech writers. I get it. I do not believe that any of them just make spontaneous utterances inspired by God. Even Lincoln wrote it down on the back of an envelope on the way to Gettysburg. But I bet he did not just READ it straight off the envelope, but extemporized a bit without getting himself in trouble.

I always liked Bush's more folksy way of speaking. When he would veer from his canned text you could usually tell, and it appeared genuine to me. Example: He addressed criticism of what some were calling his 'cowboy swagger' saying 'In Texas, we call that.......walking.' Sorry, it just broke me up. I don't even mind a few malapropisms, as it only adds to the impression that this is a genuine guy.

I compare that to Obama, Mr. Smooth. I get no sense of warmth from the man and when he gets away from his canned text, I can just see his handlers cringing. Example: Why didn't he get a dog for the Whitehouse as he had been talking about during the campaign? 'Guess that was just another campaign promise. Heh, heh, heh.'

I believe that it is in those unguarded moments, off script, you get a glimps of what's inside of a person. What do they consider funny? What do they poke fun at? Themselves? Or Special Olympics?

A decade ago, John Roberts played a valuable role helping attorneys overturn a Colorado referendum that would have allowed discrimination against gays � free assistance the Supreme Court nominee didn't mention in a questionnaire he filled out for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The revelation didn't appear to dent his popularity among conservative groups nor quell some of the opposition of liberal groups fearful he could help overturn landmark decisions such as Roe v. Wade, which guarantees a right to an abortion.

An attorney who worked with Roberts cautioned against making guesses about his personal views based on his involvement in the Colorado case, which gay rights advocates consider one of their most important legal victories.

"It may be that John and others didn't see this case as a gay-rights case," said Walter Smith, who was in charge of pro bono work at Roberts' former Washington law firm, Hogan & Hartson.

Smith said Roberts may instead have viewed the case as a broader question of whether the constitutional guarantee of equal protection prohibited singling out a particular group of people that wouldn't be protected by an anti-discrimination law.

"I don't think this gives you any clear answers, but I think it's a factor people can and should look at to figure out what this guy is made of and what kind of Supreme Court justice he would make," Smith said.

On Friday, Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans released two memos by Roberts when he was as an assistant counsel in the Reagan White House. In one, Roberts argued that President Reagan should not interfere in a Kentucky case involving the display of tributes to God in schools.

In the other, Roberts writes that Reagan shouldn't grant presidential pardons to bombers of abortion clinics. "The president unequivocally condemns such acts of violence," he wrote in a draft reply to a lawmaker seeking Reagan's position. "No matter how lofty or sincerely held the goal, those who resort to violence to achieve it are criminals."

Meanwhile, the Justice Department denied a request by Judiciary Committee Democrats for Roberts' writings on 16 cases he handled when he was principal deputy solicitor general during President George H.W. Bush's administration. The department also declined to provide the materials, other than those already publicly available, to The Associated Press and other organizations that sought them under the Freedom of Information Act.

"We cannot provide to the committee documents disclosing the confidential legal advice and internal deliberations of the attorneys advising the solicitor general," assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella wrote Friday to the eight committee Democrats.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the panel's senior Democrat, said Roberts made decisions whether to pursue legal appeals in more than 700 cases. "The decision to keep these documents under cover is disappointing," Leahy said.

The gay rights case involved Amendment 2, a constitutional amendment approved by Colorado voters in 1992 that would have barred laws, ordinances or regulations protecting gays from discrimination by landlords, employers or public agencies such as school districts.

Gay rights groups sued, and the measure was declared unconstitutional in a 6-3 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996.

Roberts' role in the case, disclosed this week by the Los Angeles Times, included helping develop a strategy and firing tough questions during a mock court session at Jean Dubofsky, a former Colorado Supreme Court justice who argued the case on behalf of the gay rights plaintiffs.

Dubofsky, who did not return calls Friday, said Roberts helped develop the strategy that the law violated the equal protection clause in the Constitution � and prepared her for tough questions from conservative members of the court. She recalled how Justice Antonin Scalia asked for specific legal citations.

"I had it right there at my fingertips," she told the Times. "Roberts was just terrifically helpful in meeting with me and spending some time on the issue. He seemed to be very fair-minded and very astute."

Dubofsky had never argued before the Supreme Court. Smith said she called his firm and asked specifically for help from Roberts, who argued 39 cases before the court before he was confirmed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., in 2003.

Smith said any lawyer at Hogan & Hartson would have had the right to decline to work on any case for moral, religious or other reasons.

"If John had felt that way about this case, given that he is a brilliant lawyer, he would have just said, `This isn't my cup of tea' and I would have said, `Fine, we'll look for something else that would suit you,'" Smith said.

The Lambda Legal Defense Fund, which helped move the case through the state and federal courts, said Roberts' involvement raised more questions about him than it answered because of his "much more extensive advocacy of positions that we oppose," executive director Kevin Cathcart said.

"This is one more piece that will be added to the puzzle in the vetting of John Roberts' nomination," Cathcart said.

The Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, said his support for Roberts' nomination has not diminished. "He wasn't the lead lawyer. They only asked him to play a part where he would be Scalia in a mock trial," Sheldon said.

Focus on the Family Action, the political arm of the Colorado Springs-based conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family, said Roberts' involvement was "certainly not welcome news to those of us who advocate for traditional values," but did not prompt new concerns about his nomination, which the group supports.

"That's what lawyers do � represent their firm's clients, whether they agree with what those clients stand for or not," the group said in a statement.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/08/05/national/w135401D98.DTL