Bush Apologists

Make me wish for an arena, some lions and a thumbs down. (Even the dog looks ashamed.)

The Simple Human Decency of George Bush by Ed Lasky from American Thinker.

Even the title makes me gag. What part of torture is decent? How are unjust wars decent? How was Bush's reaction to Katrina decent? How about trashing the Constitution in a quest for ever more power? Is that in some way decent?

Let's look up decent and see if it means something other than what I think it does.

1. conforming to the recognized standard of propriety, good taste, modesty, etc.

2. respectable; worthy

3. adequate; fair; passable

4. kind; obliging; generous

5. suitable; appropriate

Ok, I'm not confused. Decent cannot be applied to W in any way, shape or form. Continuing on . . .

Many readers of this site - including yours truly - have disagreed vehemently with George Bush on numerous occasions. Me and Lasky sittin' in a tree . . . Unlike the left, however, most of us have seen the president as a decent, God-fearing man who took office and served during perhaps the most consequential period of American history since the Civil War. WWI and WWII didn't count? How about the Great Depression? Not consequential? The Vietnam War era was unimportant? How about the Flu Epidemic of 1918? At least 20,000,000 people died in that. It's arrogant to think that the last 8 years have been the most consequential in US history just because we're living through it. There have been wars before, wars in which far more than 4,000 US soldiers died. There have been attacks on the US, and terrorists attacks before. What's so special about now? He will never, ever be vouchsafed this decency by the left - no matter if the evidence comes up and smacks them over the head. What evidence? Torture? Gitmo? Katrina? Iraq? Will the right ever see those things even if they smack them on the head?

What's truly important in that paragraph is one hypenated word: god-fearing. There is a meme in the christian right that if you are a christian, you must necessarily be good. christians=good. the rest of us=bad. Patently ridiculous, but there you have it.

Here's the bludgeon: or perhaps truncheon:

For much of the past seven years, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney White House. apparently, someone's copy-paste button is broken. the rest of that sentence is have waged a clandestine operation inside the and then White House. I know that they have waged clandenstine operations inside the White House. They involved torture and wiretapping the whole freakin' country. It has involved thousands of military personnel, private presidential letters and meetings that were kept off their public calendars or sometimes left the news media in the dark. Their mission: to comfort the families of soldiers who died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks we could have said "since 2001" or "since the beginning of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq". "Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks" is to remind you that TERRORISTS! are trying to KILLYOU! and make us all MUSLIM! and therefore Bush has the right to do ANYTHINGHEWANTS! to make us all safe. and to lift the spirits of those wounded in the service of their country. If Bush really wanted to make those people feel better, why did he start a war based on what he knew was a lie? Why doesn't he get those people out of Iraq?

On Monday, the president is set to make a more common public trip - with reporters in tow - to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, home to many of the wounded and a symbol of controversy earlier in his presidency over the quality of care the veterans were receiving. But the size and scope of Mr. Bush's and Mr. Cheney's private endeavors to meet with wounded soliders and families of the fallen far exceed anything that has been witnessed publicly, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials familiar with the effort. BFG. He could have stopped this anytime he wanted. He didn't even have to start the Iraq war. He worked hard to start that one. Bush caused the pain these soldiers and their families are experiencing. For him to go back later and try to make them feel better is manipulative and selfish.

Bush says the reason he did it is simply that he felt it his duty to do so. Well, duh, you caused their pain, asshat.
Mr. Bush, for instance, has sent personal letters to the families of every one of the more than 4,000 troops who have died in the two wars, an enormous personal effort that consumed hours of his time and escaped public notice. Is this why we haven't been getting any actual governance that didn't relate to war and torture? Was he writing to the families of the soldiers he put in harm's way instead of dealing with Katrina? The task, along with meeting family members of troops killed in action, has been so wrenching - balancing the anger, grief and pride of families coping with the loss symbolized by a flag-draped coffin - that the president often leaned on his wife, Laura, for emotional support. "I lean on the Almighty and Laura," Mr. Bush said in the interview. "She has been very reassuring, very calming." Mr. Bush also has met privately with more than 500 families of troops killed in action and with more than 950 wounded veterans, according to White House spokesman Carlton Carroll. Many of those meetings were outside the presence of the news media at the White House or at private sessions during official travel stops, officials said. The first lady said those private visits, many of which she also attended, took a heavy emotional toll, not just on the president, but on her as well. As well it should, you warmongering, torturing monster!

Vice President Cheney also made an extraordinary effort to meet with wounded soldiers and families of the deceased. A purely political observation is if the public knew of this herculean effort on the part of Bush and Cheney - the sheer numbers being incredible - the sheer numbers are incredible because Bush and Cheney ensured they would be. I daresay the president's approval ratings would not be hovering in the mid-20's. No, they'd be lower. The demonization of Bush by the media and the left would have been much more difficult and perhaps less successful. Hello, those boys are dead because of him! But in the end, they were right to keep it a secret. Any hint of politics in such an effort would have made the entire exercise seem hypocritical. And you can bet that the media and the left would have tried to paint any effort to visit and comfort the troops - such as the massive undertaking described in the article - as PR window dressing, nothing more.Bush has come in for a lot of criticism - much of it deserved - over the years. But the portrayal of him as an unfeeling, uncaring man when it came to the suffering of soldiers or citizens as a result of war or natural disaster was always purely political. So what about the portrayal of him as an unfeeling, uncaring man when it comes to the suffering in Katrina? Those people are still suffering. Bush hasn't done a goddamn things about it. Even his most vigorous supporters, however, could not have imagined the extent to which he gave of his time and emotional energy to ease the suffering of Americans who have given so much for America during his time in office. because he made them!