Bush sets record-longest vacation in recent history

[Charade]

I had to see this again.

Do you need glasses? Did something happen to your reading skills?

 

[Tanuki]

Putin - now THERE's one trustworthy guy.

 

[Charade]

The dead can't speak. If a mother doesn't have a right to speak for her dead son, then your opinion must be more valid then hers?

But in his life before he died, he did speak. He reenlisted to go back to Iraq. That pretty much indicates what was on his mind at the time.

 

[bsnyder]

But in his life before he died, he did speak. He reenlisted to go back to Iraq. That pretty much indicates what was on his mind at the time.

And let's not forget that at Cindy Sheehan's first meeting with President Bush, she didn't speak her mind then because she was deferring to Casey's wishes.

 

[BuckNaked]

But in his life before he died, he did speak. He reenlisted to go back to Iraq. That pretty much indicates what was on his mind at the time.

Not to mention the fact that we don't know that she is speaking "for" her son.

 

[Charade]

Frankly, I hope he never meets her too. I'm enjoying watching the sight of how one little woman on a roadside in Crawford, TX can cause the righties to rachet up the rhetoric and turn themselves inside out.

.

I"ll say same thing about the libs. It's interesting watching such wonderful organizations such as MoveOn.org and "celebs" like Moore use this woman as a catalyst (stepping stone) for *their* agenda.

 

[Charade]

That said, I'm not going to rebut every slimy attack against her. I'm going to just let the right continue to do themselves damage by attacking the mother of a dead soldier. Carry on, you're helping us more than you can possibly imagine.

Can I assume you agree with EVERYTHING she has said so far? And I do mean *everything*.

 

[peachgirl]

Can I assume you agree with EVERYTHING she has said so far? And I do mean *everything*.

Read the thread and catch up, that's already been covered.

 

[Charade]

Read the thread and catch up, that's already been covered.

In less time than you took to write your response could have said yes or no.

 

[peachgirl]

In less time than you took to write your response could have said yes or no.

Edited, because I can always say more...

Yes, I could have, but you like setting little traps so my answer isn't a simple yes or no. Since you're the one asking, I figure you can take the trouble to read what I already posted if you really wanted to know.

 

[richiebaseball]

So still waiting to be convinced that nation-building is a responsibility of the US as that is all that we are doing. Iraq was never a direct, immediate threat in the past or future to the US.

Your crystal ball working that good eh? Hey, who wins the Series this year?

Richard

 

[richiebaseball]

Unfortunately, William J. Maher, Jr. has something in common with Cindy Sheehan. Both lost sons in Iraq.

William lost Billy. Cindy lost Casey.

And they have something else in common. Both were offered condolences in a private meeting by the President of the United States. Cindy Sheehan wasn't satisfied with her meeting and wants another. That made me wonder what the President is like in the context of bereavement. So this week, I sought out William Maher to ask him about the death of his son, and his audience with the President.

William J. Maher, III, was the 50th American to die in combat in Iraq. He was born and raised in the Philadelphia suburbs. After high school, he dabbled in a few things before finding his calling the military.

"He fell in love with army," his dad told me.

"He was the kind of kid who would go to a baseball game, and damn near break down in tears when they'd sing the National Anthem. He always said, 'That just does something to me, dad.' And this was when he was a little guy. He was always patriotic, loved his family, his country and his friends. He really did love life."

Army specialist Maher, 35, was killed by an explosive dropped from an overpass in central Baghdad as he drove a Humvee on July 28, 2003. His parents got the word hours later.

"I got a call from my wife, who was at home, and said that two officers had come to the house, it was a Monday. I shot right home, that is how we found out. After that, things were a blur. You cannot imagine the response we got from all across the United States. Hand-knitted blankets and things, the outpouring of the American people was phenomenal."

Part of the outpouring to which he referred was from the President himself.

This past February, Maher, and his wife, Adeline, met with the President at the Willow Grove Naval Air Station in Warminster, PA. The President was in town to sell his Social Security plan. He made time to meet with the Mahers, so long as they would follow one ground rule.

"When the White House called my wife, they said she wasn't allowed to tell even my other son or daughter that we were invited to meet the President. They didn't want the press to know, and said the President didn't want the press to know. If it would have leaked out, we would not have had the meeting."

Which is telling. It belies the complaints of those who think the President has somehow politicized the situation regarding those who have died in Iraq.

The President spent 30 minutes with the Mahers. The only other people in the room were a security person, and a representative of their Congressman, Mike Fitzpatrick.

So what is it like to lose a child to war, and sit with this President? William Maher told me.

"When he came in, it was a little tough, especially on my wife. He even said to her, I hope you can get through this. The two of them really hit it off. My wife sat on the sofa with the President, and I sat in a chair, and we spoke about Billy. He asked about him. He told us how he felt, and how he had to go through this day in and day out, but he felt it was very important, as my wife and I do. A lot of people keep saying, 'when are they coming home, and I say, when the job is done.'"

"He explained that he did not want our soldiers to die in vain, and that was important to him, and he said that 'as long as it is on my watch, we are going to be over there to get this resolved', and I am glad he feels that way because even thought we hurt a lot, it makes feel better that we have a purpose there, and I think we do, and that the job will be done."

I asked William Maher if he believed political considerations played any role in his getting the meeting.

"This just happened in February, he was already re-elected, so he didn't have to meet with us. The most powerful man in the universe still thinks of the families after being elected to 2nd term. It meant a lot, he impressed the living daylights out of me. He's a very strong character, very strong person, and explained a lot about his life, explained much of what he went through, and his wife and family, he was very down to earth."

Valerie Mihalek is the person from Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick's office who was in the room. She later told me that she had been witness to what William Maher described.

"It was the most amazing thing to see how compassionate the President was. He just walked in as if he was one of family, and walked right up, and hugged them. Adie was crying. He was wonderful with her. He was getting upset too. They sat on sofa and his attention to them was as if he had known them his entire life. He gave them twice the time allocated, which had been 15 minutes. He never rushed them. They talked about their families. The President tried to lighten the mood by speaking about how he met Laura and asked how Bill met Adie. It was the most personable meeting you could image. No invasion of their privacy. This was a very comforting, relaxing atmosphere, which was really special," Mihalek told me.

I asked the grieving father from Pennsylvania about the grieving mother from California who is now camped out in Texas.

"My heart goes out to her, especially when I see what my wife goes through. You live with this every day. The first year you still think that door is going to open and your son is going to walk through it. She deserves the right to say what she wants to say, thank God you can do that in this country, but do I believe in what she says, no I don't."

"When the President said our son, or any other son would not die in vain, that made me feel real good, because I certainly don't want this thing to end up the way Vietnam did, with American vs. American, and I felt really good he made that statement. The man sticks to his word."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/michael-smerconish/the-consoling-president_5757.html

 

[Lebjwb]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45815


Wednesday, August 17, 2005



Cindy Sheehan:
Anti-war catalyst

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: August 17, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern



By Patrick J. Buchanan



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© 2005 Creators Syndicate Inc.

When he flew off to San Clemente, Calif., in the summer of 1969 for his August vacation, Richard Nixon was riding a wave of popularity.

He had announced the first troop withdrawal from Vietnam. He had met the Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on touchdown in the Pacific. He had become the first president to visit a captive nation with a triumphal tour of Bucharest. And he had just proposed a sweeping reform of welfare praised by both parties.


But when Nixon returned in September, a storm had broken. Wrote David Broder: "It is becoming more obvious with each passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon Johnson's authority in 1968 are out to break Richard Nixon in 1969.

"The likelihood is great that they will succeed again."

They did not succeed in breaking Nixon's presidency. He broke them. The crucial moment was his "Great Silent Majority" speech of Nov. 3, 1969, which rallied Middle America behind his war policy.

George W. Bush is approaching a similar moment of truth. And Cindy Sheehan may be the catalyst of crisis for the Bush presidency.

As a Gold Star mother of a soldier son slain in Iraq, Sheehan has authenticity and moral authority. Wedded to the passion of her protest, these make her a magnet for a bored White House press corps camped in Crawford for August. Cindy and the president are the only stories in town. And as a source of daily derogatory commentary on the president, Sheehan is using the media, and the media are using her, for the same end: to bedevil George W. Bush.

They are succeeding. When one considers the non-stop cable TV coverage given the mother of Natalie Holloway, the Alabama teen missing in Aruba, Cindy Sheehan will soon be a household name. The more media she attracts, the more people she draws to Crawford. The more people who join Cindy in Crawford, the more media coverage they will attract. It is hard to see what breaks this cycle before Labor Day and the president's return.

The purity of Sheehan's protest has lately been diluted by her association with the far Left, the extravagance of her language and the arrival of political operatives to manipulate and manage her. But in a slow news month, Cindy Sheehan has helped turn the focus of national debate back to the war, at a moment of special vulnerability for the president.

According to Newsweek, support for Bush's handling of the war has fallen for the first time below 40 percent – to 34 percent, with 61 percent now disapproving of his war leadership. Compare these numbers to the 68 percent support Nixon commanded on Vietnam after that Nov. 3 address, and the gravity of Bush's condition becomes evident.

Put bluntly, the bottom is falling out of support for the commander in chief. What is remarkable is that no Democrat has stepped forward, as Gene McCarthy did, to lead an anti-war crusade and call for a date certain for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Cindy Sheehan is filling that vacuum.

As the White House seems to be losing control of the debate, our war leaders no longer seem to be singing from the same song sheet. When the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Casey, spoke of "substantial" withdrawals of U.S. forces by spring, with Rumsfeld beside him, he was contradicted by Bush who dismissed this as "speculation" and reportedly rebuked.

To most Americans, it seems apparent that the United States and its allies do not have the boots on the ground to grind down and defeat this Sunni-jihadist insurgency. Yet, no one is talking about sending more U.S. combat brigades. How, then, do you win the war?

"As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" is President Bush's exit strategy. But how can the Iraqis the U.S. Army is training defeat an enemy the U.S. Army has itself been unable to defeat in two years?


Americans do not want an endless no-win war, but they also do not want to cut and run, or walk away and leave a debacle, when they believe that 1,850 Americans have died and 13,000 have been wounded in a noble cause. If President Bush cannot describe "victory" in terms convincing enough to Americans willing to spend blood indefinitely, he will have to persuade them to stay the course by describing what a disaster defeat will mean for Iraq and for America's position in the world.

But to do that would raise a question: Why, then, in heaven's name, did America take such a risk, when Iraq was never a threat?

September could see the coalescing of an anti-war movement that both bedevils the White House and divides a Democratic Party that seeks to benefit from a losing war, without having to offer a plan to win it or end it, without being held accountable for having supported it, or responsible for undercutting it.

Our politics appear likely to become even more poisoned when the president returns from his troubled vacation.



Buchanan sees the writing on the wall.

 

[ThAnswr]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1737867,00.html
She admits that he does not agree with the "level of intensity" she has devoted to peace in the past year.

So?

Yes, many relationships cannot cope with the loss of a child. Especially when one of the parents chooses to ignore the other's grief for their own purpose.

And sometimes they just break up because of the stress of losing a child.

 

[Lebjwb]

That's worth repeating:

"As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" is President Bush's exit strategy. But how can the Iraqis the U.S. Army is training defeat an enemy the U.S. Army has itself been unable to defeat in two years?

Anybody...Anybody?

 

[ThAnswr]

You're leaving out the Democrats in Congress who voted to authorize the war.

They sure did.........based on the information provided by the Bush administration.

You are redefining chutzpa. The old definition of chutzpa was killing your parents and throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you're an orphan.

The new defintion of chutzpa: voting to authorize the use of force based on information provided by the Bush administration and then when the information is shown to be bogus and you (generic) complain, are then told "but you voted for it".

Nobody wanted to believe their president was a lying *******. Unfortunately, that's exactly what he turned out to be.

 

[Charade]

That's worth repeating:

"As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" is President Bush's exit strategy. But how can the Iraqis the U.S. Army is training defeat an enemy the U.S. Army has itself been unable to defeat in two years?

Anybody...Anybody?

Because as more and more Iraqi's get tired of being attacked, the people will help (as they are now) root out the insurgents. Will they get them all? Probably not. But that doesn't mean the effort should cease.

 

[ThAnswr]

That was the plan in 2004 after we were already there? Wow, now thats a good plan. After they were beating on the President through all the primaries, saying they knew better, that was their plan? Amazing. As another famous Dis'er says "You can't make this up".

LOL.

There was an old saying in vaudeville: Steal from the best.

It's really a nice phrase. It says so much with so few words.

 

[Charade]

Nobody wanted to believe their president was a lying *******.

Hmmm.. I must have heard this about a 1000 times so it must be true.

 

[ThAnswr]

From all the available evidence, she and her son had completely opposite political views. That's what I have a problem with.

Why? Do all members of your family agree on everything? Mine certainly doesn't.

Unfortunately, if that's true, she was right and he was wrong.