Not Unrelated
“I wish it had never happened,” Jones said.
Like many things about Jones, freedom fries lend themselves to caricature. They are an emotional response to a complex problem, easily reduced to a ticker line on CNN.
But Jones now says we went to war “with no justification.” He has challenged the Bush administration, quizzing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other presidential advisers in public hearings. He has lined the hallway outside his office with “the faces of the fallen.”
Jones represents the state’s most military congressional district, running from Camp Lejeune along the coast through Cherry Point, up to the Outer Banks.
“If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong,” Jones said. “Congress must be told the truth.”
Jones is no favorite of the White House these days, or of his fellow Republicans, particularly those in leadership roles. The same impulse that prompted him to get mad at the French now makes Jones criticize the war and, lately, House ethics rules. Jones accepts that his emotions cost him influence, but he insists he can live with the consequences.
Item #2: Fox News Network Ratings, the offical television cable network of “Freedom Fries”,
Oct. 2004: 1,074,000
Nov. 2004: 891,000
Dec. 2004: 568,000
Jan. 2005: 564,000
Feb. 2005: 520,000
Mar. 2005: 498,000
Apr. 2005: 445,000