Subject: Revealed: Why Bush avoids military funerals
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:25:41 -0700
From: Michael Munk lastmarx@comcast.net
note: This little blog post is offered in honor of a two-time veteran (World War II, Vietnam) whom I know, a career Marine, now retired, who, as a skinny teenager from Houston fought and won the Purple Heart for valor in the Battle of Okinawa, the longest, bloodiest battle at the end of the war in the Pacific, and now, as he turns 80 this week, is wobbling due to an old war wound but is still going strong. The veteran is my father. Semper fidelis!)
In Stars & Stripes,Bush finally explains why he won't attend U.S. soldiers' funerals
Has the real significance, as measured in blood and death, of George W. Bush's boondoggle in Iraq penetrated the security bubble - secure from external, critical voices; sealed-off from disagreeable reality; safe from inconvenient truth - in which the American leader putters along from day to day?
As of last night, "at least 2546 members of the U.S. military [had] died since the beginning of the Iraq war..., according to an Associated Press count." That figure includes seven military civilians and is six deaths higher than the Defense Department's own count.
What does Bush really think about the deaths his war-making has caused? Mainstream news media in the U.S. don't really offer much about the president's most profound pensées on this subject. However, last week, in a rare, unscripted-by-his-handlers moment aboard Air Force One, Bush granted an interview to a reporter from the Defense Department's Stars & Stripes newspaper, that strange news organ that is government-owned but ostensibly, editorially independent. (It has certainly published news reports about troop morale in Iraq that have made the Pentagon's brass fume.) Aimed primarily at American military personnel overseas, the Stars & Stripes doesn't really reach a large audience of non-military-related readers back in the U.S.
Thus, many probably missed Bush's responses to questions from actual soldiers in the field that the Stars & Stripes reporter passed along to the Commander in Chief. Bush was asked, for example, "if a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be acceptable in return for a cease-fire by [so-called Iraqi] insurgents." In response, Bush "called the question hypothetical and deferred comment to Gen. George Casey," the head of the U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq. When reminded by the Stars & Stripes' reporter, however, that "[m]edia outlets have reported that Sunni insurgents have offered such a trade-off," Bush, who once famously declared that he does not read newspapers, replied: "I'm not sure they have or haven't....I will tell you that whatever decisions I make will be made upon the recommendations of commanders and with one thing in my mind: Can we win?" (The Commander in Chief did not specify what, exactly, was to be "won.")
Perhaps most revealing in the remarks Bush offered the Stars & Stripes was his answer when he was asked why, to date, he has not attended the funeral of a single U.S. soldier who has been killed in his war. Bush, who famously dodged the regular-forces draft during the Vietnam War era, then went AWOL from his National Guard duty post in Texas, said: "Because which funeral do you go to? In my judgment, I think if I go to one I should go to all. How do you honor one person but not another?"
Answer (memo to the Commander in Chief's handlers): By attending one single fallen soldier's funeral, Bush could honor them all.
* * * * * * * * * *
President Bush answers questions from downrange
Says situations will determine troop levels
By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, July 5, 2006
White House photo by Paul Morse
President Bush is presented with a cake in honor of his upcoming 60th birthday during a luncheon with troops Tuesday at Fort Bragg.
http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=37535&archive=true
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Proof of DU starting a new World Plague
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 08:47:49 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
From: Ruth D. Bundy or Ralph Charles Whitley, Sr.
To:
Please
Read these:
http://www.sfbayview.com/031506/uraniumbombing031506.shtml
http://www.sfbayview.com/051706/warcrimes.shtml
http://www.sfbayview.com/062806/dd062806.shtml
GOD HELP US!
