Daehnes Presidential Corner: in Retrospect
		March 22, 2003: Time to Be an American
			Greetings all. We now find ourselves at a great crossroads, a watershed event in American history.  Throughout time, nations have found themselves subject to the great winds of change.  America, too, shall be transformed into a new nation, a country that, like any other, finds change imperviousness quite frankly impossible.  Today out people find themselves riding amidst a wave of American dominance in a world that either cooperates with, fears, or challenges our superiority.  We are a safe people.  We are a confident people.  But, we are not confident in ourselves or our resolve.  Why?  Because we reject our own philosophy, we repudiate the very greatness we have been given by ancestry.  We own this planet, and every single American citizen should cherish that fact as much as the freedoms of speech, religion, and the pursuit of individual happiness guaranteed by the American Constitution.  We bicker and argue, protest and dissent, but we are never united.  We never will be.  I challenge today all those who read this to attempt to make this the United States of America.  Be proud of our essence.  If not, we will change, and we will change into another mediocre state where a foreign superpower controls our once taken for granted freedom of pursuing happiness.  Believe in Americanism, for it is time to be an American.
		March 23, 2003: NOT BAD FOR A NINCOMPOOP
		After ninety-six hours of incessant media coverage of the Iraqi conflict, I have reached a fortuitous epiphany.  Not by serendipity are reporters “embedded” (as the term has surfaced all too frequently) with the mainstream military.  Too, they are not being permitted to document this even for a militaristic distant battlefield advantage.  The ultra liberalized media outlets of the entire free world have sided with the conservative cause. Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Our discredited leader, a conservative Republican idealist, has won over his most preeminent opposition.  Media notwithstanding, Saddam Hussein is not Bush’s most potent objective.  The American people themselves, through the very mentionable media medium, are the actual target of administration propaganda efforts.  Bush has oh so astutely coaxed the media into submission.  How?  He and his advisors to credit have given the information industry unlimited and unfettered access to action while cleverly withholding classified information.  By enabling this free flow of reporting, the American leader has made this war the media’s.  Everyone wins as well! Bush has media support to the extent that even Geraldo Rivera has endorsed the conflict as the most just and “undastardly” cause of recent centuries.  The media has garnered ratings, justified their sometimes questionable and disreputable existence, and has assisted our troops in disproving the “dying” Iraqi regime’s spurious claims of destroyed American tanks or supposed coalition atrocities.  Finally, the free world is now procuring pure and unadulterated information from the battle areas.  Bush may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but for a simpleton, he has done the superb.  Let this historical event serve as a lesson for the posterity.  When you want success for a United Nations unsanctioned military strike, backing of a truthfully unilateral effort, or support for 80 billion dollars in superfluous war expenses, all one must do is win over the media.  Simple as that!