I spent part of Sunday night going through stories about the Bush visit to Iraq. As you can probably guess, I found very little news and quite a few accusations that 'he only did it a photo op'. I then went and looked for stories about Hillary's visits. Lots of news, very few accusations of 'playing politics'.

Here's what I did, I went to Google, typed in 'Bush Iraq Visit' and went into the first 3 pages. I stayed away from the 'non-mainstream' agencies like The Nation.

Here's some headlines that I found:
ABC News headline - Bush's Iraq visit a pre-election PR stunt

USA Today headline - Afterglow fading on Bush's PR coup in Iraq

Reuters headline - Aides Prodded Reluctant Bush on Iraq Trip

The rest of the stories included quips about how Bush never served in Vietnam, reminders of recent deaths in Iraq, and quotes from 'professionals' about Bush's 'Showboating'. One guy was accusing him of 'lying' to the American people about his whereabouts, CNN was complaining about not having been included in the press pool, while another guy was whining about how this was only done to overshadow Hillariy's visit to the ME.

Speaking of Hillary's visit, here are a dozen stroies I pulled off Google news. I entered "Hillary Afghanistan" and looked through 5 pages of news stories, again staying away from the 'non-mainstream' sites like WND and NewsMax.

New York Times (posted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Boston Globe
CNN
Newsday
MSNBC
New York Post #1
New York Post #2
New York Post #3

And even a couple Fox News stories,
Fox News #1
Fox News #2

Geez, if you go through the Hillary stories, you'd think that there was nothing but love coming out of her heart for our troops. That she is only doing this for them, not to flood the media with pics of her eating with a bunch of people dressed to blend into a sand dune.

Of course both visits were political. But I believe Bush's visit was a bit more sincere, whereas Hillary's was more transparent. If she does end up running next year, I can guarantee you that photos of those visits will end up in her campaign ads, just like ones from Bush's visit will end up in his.

But what I am trying to point out is this, where was the mainstream press and their accusations of a 'PR Scam'? How can these people honestly say that they are 'Reporting' 'The News' any longer?

They reported her word for word, even when those words were disparaging to the troops around her. Hell, even Lieberman could see the politics in her visits.

This is where High Blood Pressure comes from.