VETERANS DAY REMEMBRANCE: 2002-2003

11/11/1918 Peace Breaks Out

With Armistice Day (aka Veterans Day) just past, let's take a moment away from the political battleground here in Texas. 

Yesterday, I ran across this recording and now find myself drifting back to some twelve years ago. The clip is dated 3/26/03, near the end of my last stint on AM talk radio. That lasted  from the run-up to the invasion of Iraq to shortly after the war started. 

Though I've never served in the military, this brings me to my "what I did during the war" story, inadequate as it is. 

In 2002 when I moved to Portland, Maine, I'd been doing talk radio fill-ins in New Hampshire for almost a decade. It was something of a hobby. When I started subbing at a station in my new town, I decided to get more serious about it. WGAN-AM was/is a classic news/talker with a decent news operation to spice up the usual slate of conservative programming. Being on a Maine radio station doesn't sound like much except that George H.W. Bush was in our listenership. Also, the radio group General Manager at the time was something of a noted figure in talk radio for discovering and developing talent.

My views about the coming war were quite clear. The past summer, just as the full-on marketing of it was about to get underway, I did a show about the run-up to the Gulf War in 1990. I explained why we should be extraordinarily skeptical of the Bush Administration's claims that would soon come. Still, that fall and winter, war talk didn't define my increasing presence at the station. By springtime, it actually offered a breakthrough for my career. When the invasion of Iraq began on March 19, they expanded local coverage pulling the syndicated programming from nine to noon and putting me there instead. I followed the morning show and did the lead in to Rush Limbaugh! 

Most definitely open-carry

From the start, my show pushed the boundaries for the mostly conservative listeners. One morning, our troops paused for a moment before taking Baghdad in what was expected to be a bloodbath. On air, I pondered "what if George Bush had ANOTHER Christian conversion and became a pacifist" and refused to allow the slaughter? Conservative Christians were outraged and called to insist that Jesus would certainly be pro-war. I shared my wonder at why, if so, some call him "The Prince of Peace."

I was edgy, but not completely over-the-edge until I was cornered on-air by one caller about the Weapons of Mass Destruction, supposedly the reason for the war. I had raised the mystery at hand, wondering why none had been discovered. He pressed me about it. It was just a few days after the invasion and I'd held back from saying what I had been thinking - that there were none. But he pressed and I said it. "THERE ARE NO WMD!"

"You're going to eat a lot of crow when they're found," he warned me. 

I turned it into a bet. Yes, I'd eat REAL crow, live on-the-air, if he was right. BUT - if he was wrong? His part of the wager was that he'd call for the impeachment of the President of the United States.

After my shift that day, I ran into the GM in the break room.

"Be sure to let me know when the first death threats come in," I joked.

He didn't have the heart to tell me they'd had some already.

NOTHING accomplished - still not finished

Of course, I didn't last long enough at WGAN to collect on my bet. Soon after, the excitement of the invasion turned to "Mission Accomplished." They cut my shift to return to network programming. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that the regular calls I'd been getting to fill-in did not resume. I did get one such request awhile later - to step in for the garden show (yes, I tried despite total ignorance on the subject...just to show my hosting chops).  Except for being interviewed on air in the years since, I haven't been on the broadcaster side again till recently.

So that's my "what I did during the war" story. No, I never served in the military. But I did serve my country as best I could, brandishing my First Amendment rights trying to turn swords into plowshares. 

What I sacrificed was small - just that opportunity in talk radio. Sorry to say, my sacrifice was in vain. I wish there had been some way truth-telling - mine and others - could have saved our soldiers from making the sacrifices they made in Iraq. Many of them offered - and gave - their lives in good faith. We need to remember that - and that those who led them to it were operating in bad faith.

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