Bush supporters' aftermath thread

Are you talkin to me?
(looks around with DeNiro incredulity)
I said...are YOU talkin to ME?

Yeah, but what about Carlito?

Lola wrote:

Yeah, but what about Carlito?

Carlito did it his way

After reading this, I think the president needs to seriously consider hiring Scott Ott as one of his speech-writers.

Quote:

Leak: Draft of Bush Answer to Cindy Sheehan
by Scott Ott

(2005-08-24) -- An internal White House memo, leaked today, indicates how President George Bush initially planned to address Cindy Sheehan's question: What "noble cause" did my son die for?

The draft memo includes suggestions from White House communications staff, followed by several paragraphs apparently handwritten by the president.

blah blah blah

Dear Mrs. Sheehan,
You have asked me to identify the noble cause for which your son died. I have not answered you personally out of respect for the nobility of your son's sacrifice.

Being president forces me into the spotlight, but I would rather stand in the shadows of men like Casey Sheehan.

(Yeah, he likes hiding in the shadows during war, that's for sure)

Directing national attention on my response to your protest creates a distraction from what matters. (Like riding my bike, and napping and holding behind the scenes surprise BBQ's for the Press) The focus of our attention, and our admiration, should rest on people like Casey Sheehan, who stand in the breach when evil threatens to break out and consume a helpless people. Evil was only threatening to break out? I thought it had according to one of the reasons given for the invasion.

Oh, and there's a bunch of helpless people being consumed by evil in Darfur,too. So, why Iraq but not Sudan?

The running story on the news networks should be the valiant efforts of our troops -- the merchants of mercy who export freedom and import honor. They trade their own lives for the sake of others. Yep, others. Like others that also have children of military age but that have too much financial influence to risk their own sons.

As a result, we live in a nation where a woman can camp outside of the president's house and verbally attack the president for weeks on end without fear of prison, torture or death. And the number of nations where such protest is possible has multiplied thanks to the work of our military. Uh, women in Afghanistan and Iraq are now allowed to do what Cindy is doing? Really? I don't think that would be wise. See HERE and HERE

You ask for what noble cause your son died?

In a sense he died so that people like you, who passionately oppose government policies, can freely express that opposition. As you camp in Crawford, you should take off your shoes, for you stand on holy ground. This land was bought with the blood of men like your son. Which has NOTHING to do with Iraq. Just because previous wars were justified, doesn't mean this one was.

Now, 25 million Iraqis cry out to enjoy the life you take for granted. Most of them will never use their freedom to denigrate the sacrifice of those who paid for it. But once liberty is enshrined in law, they will be free to do so. And when the Iraqis finally escape their incarceration, hope will spread throughout that enslaved region of the world, eventually making us all safer and more free. Again, see Afghanistan.

The key is in the lock of the prison door. Bold men risk everything to turn it. And, some keep what's going on in those prisons hidden from the public.

Mrs. Sheehan, everyone dies. But few experience the bittersweet glory of death with a purpose -- death that sets people free and produces ripples of liberty hundreds of years into the future. That sounds great. So, why aren't the children of prominant Republicans signing up for all that glory? They're gonna die anyway, right? Since everyone does.

Casey Sheehan died that freedom might triumph over bondage, hope over despair, prosperity over misery. He died restoring justice and mercy. He lived and died to help to destroy the last stubborn vestiges of the Dark Ages. Blah, Blah, Blah. Go back to the links on Afghanistan and Iraq and see how far these people are from the Dark Ages.

To paraphrase President Lincoln, the world will little note nor long remember what you and I say here. But it can never forget what Casey Sheehan did during his brief turn on earth. If we are wise, we will take increased devotion to that cause for which he gave the last full measure of devotion. Oh, No you dinnit! You dare quote Lincoln? C'mon, are you trying to compare tobacco plantations to oil, or what?

Our brave warriors have blazed a trail. They have entrusted the completion of the task to those of us they left behind. Let's, you and I, resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. Yes, our soldiers are extremely brave. How dare you take advantage and send them needlessly into harms way. You, Mr. Bush, who was certainly "left behind," need to resolve that no one else die needlessly for your little experimental bully invasion.

Let's finish the work that they have thus far so nobly advanced. You're right. You need to go finish it. I'm sure Rumsfeld can get you some camo and gear, though you'll likely have to go without a bullet proof vest.

Sincerely,
George W. Bush

Thanks, JW. I'm going to keep a copy of that.

Unforgettable and the most powerful statement I've seen about this whole thing since the war started.

Any response would fall forgotten to the side.

squinney, Thank you for taking the time to respond to this letter from Scott Ott ... the writer for Scrappleface.

The Paranoid Style
Iraq: Where socialists and anarchists join in with racialists and paleocons.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

It is becoming nearly impossible to sort the extreme rhetoric of the antiwar Left from that of the fringe paleo-Right. Both see the Iraqi war through the same lenses: the American effort is bound to fail and is a deep reflection of American pathology.

An anguished Cindy Sheehan calls Bush "the world's biggest terrorist." And she goes on to blame Israel for the death of her son ("Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel").

Her antiwar venom could easily come right out of the mouth of a more calculating David Duke. Perhaps that's why he lauded her anti-Semitism: "Courageously she has gone to Texas near the ranch of President Bush and braved the elements and a hostile Jewish supremacist media."

This odd symbiosis began right after 9/11. Then the lunatic Left mused about the "pure chaos" of the falling "two huge buck teeth" twin towers, lamented that they were more full of Democrats than Republicans, and saw the strike as righteous payback from third-world victims.

The mirror-imaging fundamentalists and censors in turn saw the attack as an angry God's retribution either for an array of our mortal sins or America's tilting toward Israel.

In Iraq, the Left thinks we are unfairly destroying others; the ultra-Right that we are being destroyed ourselves. The former alleges that we are bullying in our global influence, the latter that we are collapsing from our decadence.

But both, in their exasperation at George Bush's insistence on seeing Iraq emerge from the Hussein nightmare years with some sort of constitutional government, have embraced the paranoid style of personal invective.

They employ half-truths and spin conspiracy theories to argue that the war was unjust, impossible to win, and hatched through the result of a brainwashing of a devious few neocons.

I'll consider four diverse attacks (by a socialist, anarchist, racialist, and paleocon) on my support for the removal of Saddam Hussein, and the effort to prompt constitutional government in his place, that are emblematic of this bizarre new Left/Right nexus, shared pessimism, and paranoid methods.

I. The Cabal
II. The Anarchist Howl
III. It's About White People?
IV. America as bin Laden?


*****
*I should preface my remarks that every fact that Meyerson adduces is incorrect. Take the following:

"Soon after 9-11, the San Joaquin Valley classics professor began writing regularly for The National Review, demanding we go into Iraq, imparting martial lessons from Greece and Rome to an America abruptly at war. In short order, Hanson became a fellow at Palo Alto's Hoover Institute (sic), a dinner companion of Bush and Dick Cheney, and the most unswerving defender of administration policies."

I wrote regularly for the National Review Online, not National Review. I never "demanded" that we go into Iraq, but urged that we do so after considering both the pros and cons of that difficult choice. The Hoover Institution is not "Palo Alto's" but affiliated with Stanford University, whose administration must approve senior fellow appointments in a lengthy process that is not done "in short order." I have never on any occasion been "a dinner companion of Bush." Nor have I been an "unswerving defender of administration policies" but criticized many of its stances from immigration and farm subsidies to deficit spending and current policy toward Saudi Arabia.

** How strange that about the time that Mr. Brecher's article appeared, someone in fact did try to torch our vineyard, but managed only to scorch about 20 vines near the road before the nearby Mid-Valley Fire Department arrived to put out the fire.

In Iraq, the Left thinks we are unfairly destroying others; the ultra-Right that we are being destroyed ourselves. The former alleges that we are bullying in our global influence, the latter that we are collapsing from our decadence.

But both, in their exasperation at George Bush's insistence on seeing Iraq emerge from the Hussein nightmare years with some sort of constitutional government, have embraced the paranoid style of personal invective.

They employ half-truths and spin conspiracy theories to argue that the war was unjust, impossible to win, and hatched through the result of a brainwashing of a devious few neocons.

I think the president needs to seriously consider hiring Scott Ott as one of his speech-writers.

As you camp in Crawford, you should take off your shoes....