This photograph, taken and released by the Whitehouse on Easter, shows how much Bush cares about those injured and killed in our “War on Terror”. It ran dutifully on Drudge all day yesterday.
Non-Whitehouse photographers were not present.
Bush has yet to attend a funeral or memorial service of any of the 677 servicemen killed in Iraq.
The Whitehouse policy banning media or grieving families from greeting the remains of their loved ones at Dover Air Force base is still in effect.
Last week, 67 American Servicemen were killed in Iraq. Bush spent the week on his ranch in Crawford, TX.
The NY Times reported on Bush’s first public appearance since last Tuesday.
Also on Thursday, American forces in Iraq pushed south to retake control of several Shiite towns held by insurgents, and three Japanese civilians taken as hostages appeared in a video broadcast blindfolded, while their captors threatened them with guns, knives and swords.
Mr. Bush spent that afternoon leading representatives of 22 hunting, fishing and wildlife organizations on a tour of his 1,600-acre ranch. Among his guests were leaders of the National Rifle Association, the Ruffed Grouse Society, Ducks Unlimited and the National Wild Turkey Federation. He also gave an interview to Ladies’ Home Journal.
On Friday, as Americans worked to put a cease-fire in place in Iraq, Mr. Bush fished in the bass pond on his ranch with Roland Martin, host of the Outdoor Life Network cable show “Fishing with Roland Martin.”
Mr. Bush “took the biggest one of the day” — a four-pound bass, Mr. Martin told The Associated Press.
whoa … i knew that the press was banned from covering the arrival of the dead from Iraq, but i didn’t know the FAMILIES of the soldiers were *also* prohibited from attending. that’s just cruel.
politics trumps compassion yet again. add that to the conservative greatest hits list, above John Stewart’s observation that "Politics trumps morality" (on the Daily Show a week ago, in reference to Richard Clarke’s testimony).
the moral relativism of conservatives is truly astounding. they sure do talk a good game, but i have yet to see any of that highly touted "compassionate conservatism" with which they used to righteously praise themselves.
The Ends Justifies The Means…. no matter what. that’s the conservative mantra. and that’s the kind of moral relativism that is killing our country’s national character: it doesn’t really matter what you do, or how you do it, or to whom you do it, as long as you win in the end.
oh, yeah, and that fish story? sounds fishy to me!
There are reasons not to show the dead that has nothing to do with compassionate conservatism. I always hated "compassionate conservatism" because conservatism does not need an adjective in from of it.
"Give a man a fish [liberalism/socialism/communism] and you will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime [conservatism]."
When are you going to tell us how you would defeat terrorism?
Give a "Conservative" a clue, and he’ll disregard it in favor of propoganda anyway.
You’ll just have to wait until November to get the message.
"When are you going to tell us how you would defeat terrorism?"
Well, lessee…We could start by going after the Terrorists. That would be a nice start. You know all that money we’re spending on going after the folks who were already contained and no danger to the US? Let’s put that money towards going after actual terrorists.
While we’re at it, let’s not provide the means, as Rumsfeld suggested we were doing, to create Terrorists faster than we can get rid of them.
Then, let’s use a part of all that wasted money in Iraq to actual SECURE our homeland, for example, check more than the current 1% of crates shipped into the country.
Then, since we’ll still have a *lot* more money left from what we’re wasting in Iraq, we can also *invest* in the countries which have grown to hate us by providing them with just the smallest amount of funds to do things like build schools and roads and hospitals, so that the House of Saud and the House of Bin Laden doesn’t have quite as much of an advantage when *they* build such Madrasas and other Anti-American institutions.
Then, we could stop coddling the Friends of Bush who are as bad or worse than Sadaam Hussein (previous friend of Bush who couldn’t have gotten where he did without us). You know, the Autocracies like Saudi Arabia who we invite to spend the weekend on the Ranch, or the Kuwaiti’s who we spent billions to Liberate and in exchange?…Well, still waiting for a single election to occur there, as there hasn’t been one since we helped restore their country for them (and Bush thinks turning Iraq Democratic is the best starting point??!)
You see, if we stopped having a corrupt, hypocritical forgeign policy, it would be much harder for the rest of the world to foment hatrid against us by pointing it out.
We could re-engage in the Israel/Palestinian mess, send Clinton out there to work on it, he seemed to be getting close and have the attention span to actually keep working towards peace (obviously, ignoring it, as was the policy for W, was a disaster).
And then at the same time, the President could use his Bully Pulpit, and whatever is left of all that wasted money to create an "Apollo Project" to fast track alternative fuels so we end – once and for all – any and all reliance on these backwards, autocratic, dictatorships in the mid-East. Ya know, like you guys are trying to do in your failed "Drug War"? Stop the addictions to starve out the suppliers. But in the case of the "War on Terrorism" it would actually work!
Those are just a couple of the steps in a *real* War on Terror, as opposed to the fake, fraudulent and failed one that your Texan is waging (or wagging, if you will).
Silly me. One more thing. We should stop – immediately – killing Arab Civilians at a rate that *far* exceeds any Terrorist Attack 5 times over that anyone – Arab or otherwise – has *ever* committed on the US of A. Fighting fire with gasoline really doesn’t make a lot of sense.
We will always have terrorism as long as the USA supports Israel.
Our enemies want land piece by piece, not land for peace. The sooner you realize that, the better.
I wrote a bunch of stuff but then I lost the connection before I hit enter.
"Our enemies want land piece by piece, not land for peace."
Ughhh…Rush said this when?
"Our enemies want land piece by piece, not land for peace."
Ughhh…Rush said this when?
Tell me when Osama Bin Laden said he wanted land?
Saddam only went after Iran when Reagan gave the OK. And he went into Kuwait when he got the mixed signals from Bush the Elder.
Iran was our enemy at the time. An enemy of my enemy is my friend. Unless you live under a rock, it’s all about Palestinians vs. Israel. Bin laden to attack US for what Israel did to Hamas leader? Duh!