Bush Blames the Sailors

[chequita guevara]

Joe Conason's Journal
Bush's latest lie, blaming the USS Lincoln crew for that embarrassing "Mission Accomplished" banner that was stage-managed by his aides, isn't surprising. The entitled always blame the enlisted.

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Oct. 28, 2003 | The entitled and the enlisted
When George W. Bush is prevaricating, he often utters a little wisecrack. At today's press briefing, when he was asked about that now-embarrassing "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Lincoln, he pinned that premature boast on the crew and then delivered his quip.

"I know [the banner] was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff," said Bush. "They weren't that ingenious, by the way." Heh heh. Over at John Kerry's headquarters, the rapid response team quickly fired off a rebuke to Bush, scolding him for trying to "blame" the sailors for the sign. The Kerry press release includes this paragraph from Elizabeth Bumiller's report on White House image-making in the New York Times May 16:

"The most elaborate -- and criticized -- White House event so far was Mr. Bush's speech aboard the Abraham Lincoln announcing the end of major combat in Iraq. White House officials say that a variety of people, including the president, came up with the idea, and that [White House communications deputy Scott] Sforza embedded himself on the carrier to make preparations days before Mr. Bush's landing in a flight suit and his early evening speech. Media strategists noted afterward that Mr. Sforza and his aides had choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the "Mission Accomplished" banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot."

There's nothing surprising about this cheap little lie. The entitled always blame the enlisted. It's the American aristocratic way.

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Man, this guy just can't stop lying, can he? Maybe he's a pathological liar?

[SlowwHand]

As reported by a Radical Liberal writer.

[Guynemer]

Re: Bush Blames the Sailors

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Man, this guy just can't stop lying, can he? Maybe he's a pathological liar?

He's the President. Calling him a pathological liar is the definition of redundancy.

[SlowwHand]

http://www.salon.com/

Tell me it isn't a Radical Liberal rag.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
As reported by a Radical Liberal writer.

You can be a radical or you can be a liberal, you can't be both.

[Ming]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

You can be a radical or you can be a liberal, you can't be both.

[chequita guevara]

From left to right:
radical - progressive - liberal - moderate - conservative - reactionary

A radical liberal makes as much sense as a reactionary moderate.

[SpencerH]

Do you have nothing better to do with your time than come up with these bad trolls? Surely, you have something of import to say?

[SlowwHand]

I don't agree with your breakdown.

[lord of the mark]

Deliberate lie? Maybe. Or maybe he was simply responding off the cuff, without even bothering to check out the facts or think through that it was likely his advance men were involved. Simply putting his foot in it, yet again.

Which the whole flight to the carrier essentially was, as was the "bring em on" remark. And the "act of desperation" remark.

Bush's rhetoric since the war has been less than Churchillian - he SHOULD be expressing RESOLVE, despite setbacks, focusing on the importance of whats going on. Even if the reports on his desk indicate unheralded progress. By trying to exude constant optimism, he only invites cynicism - cynicism that may well NOT be warranted by the facts on the ground. He seems to think that in the absence of constant upbeat reports the public will give up and want to pull out - I think he substantially underestimates the resolve of the American public.

I certainly hope he isn't trying to lay the groundwork for withdrawing too early, by overemphasizing progress.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by SpencerH
Do you have nothing better to do with your time than come up with these bad trolls? Surely, you have something of import to say?

Yes, the Republicans are treating the military like crap.

If I could post a thrid thread, I ut up one about an ex-CIA agent that just had his conviction tossed. Apparently the Reagan Adminstration was embarressed by revelations that they were trading weapons to Libya for info, and set him up for a fall guy claiming he was a "rouge CIA" agent.

Why was the military and intelligence community ever stupid enough to think the Repugs cared for them?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
I don't agree with your breakdown.

You aren't a political scientist.

[SlowwHand]

Neither are you, but I know enough that I recognize that it's not just conservatives who are reactionary.
Kind of like Buck Birdseed. Can swing either way.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
From left to right:
radical - progressive - liberal - moderate - conservative - reactionary

A radical liberal makes as much sense as a reactionary moderate.

I dunno - depends in part on how you use radical - you can use it to mean far left, or more literally to mean someone intent on solving a problem at its roots, to take decisive action, etc. One can then speak of the radical right, and, as some have done recently, the "radical center" Paul Berman, in his "Terror and Liberalism" uses it more or less that way.

I dont think sloww was using it that way though. Following conservatives since Agnew, at least, he was leaving out progressive as a category, so that liberal and radical are adjacent.

Progressive could move around - while in contemporary US politics it means someone to the left of a liberal and to the right of Marxists and other radicals, at one time it was used by Stalinist fellow travelers - OTOH at another time it was used as a euphemism for the "L" word. So its position is ambivalent as well.

[lord of the mark]

in any case re: salon - is definitely a magazine that while it stayed Clinton loyal when the NYT was attacking Clinton from the left, has been very hostile to Bush, and has also been consistently dovish on the Iraq war - definitely to the left (on the issue at hand) of Leiberman, Edwards, Gephardt, and even Kerry. You could call them progressive i suppose, but its not surprisng to me that sloww might not use such language.