Tea baggers are criticizing the president for missing the wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery this Memorial Day — even though pres. Reagan, Bush and Bush also missed ceremonies — but they have conveniently forgotten that last year he did something George W. Bush never did. He visited the graves of soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan, as well as those whose lives were wasted in George Bush’s unnecessary and immoral invasion of Iraq.
Connect:
Oh, the invasion of Iraq that was supported by Congress, which had a majority of Democrats? Are you talking about that unnecessary and immoral invasion of Iraq?
And President Bush spent plenty of time visiting the war heroes in the hospital, and visiting with the families of those who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. He visited with the family of Sgt. Matt Maupin (who was held prisoner and killed) no less than four times!
Mary – There you go tea baggers go again, rewriting history. Rove, Bush, Cheney and the rest of the Republicans lied about the reasons for invading Iraq — we all remember the false claims that Saddam had WMD and even nuclear materials — and forced a vote through Congress in October 2002, two weeks before the midterm elections.
It was also just 13 months after the 9/11 attacks, and the message from the Rove White House to Senate Dems was, “Vote for our war, or we’ll campaign against you as terrorist appeasers.” Not surprisingly, Rove’s terror-politics gambit worked, and many Dems caved, including all with presidential ambitions: Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, etc. That’s what the vote was all about, and that’s also a big part of what the invasion was about. It was partly to secure Iraq’s oil, but it was also intended to secure George Bush’s political legacy as a “war prezinent.”
Not surprisingly, your facts are off. Democrats held a one-vote majority in the Senate but the House was under the iron grip of the Republican Party and Mr. Rove. On the Iraq invasion resolution, 29 Democratic senators voted for it, while 21 voted against it. In the House, just 81 Democrats voted for it while 126 voted against.
Here’s a fact–all of those presidents that you mentioned–ACTUALLY SERVED IN THE MILITARY. I’d say that’s one important skill/job requirement for being the Commander in Chief…and I believe it honors the fallen more than just wandering through a cemetary.
Joe – your commentary is so unworthy of comment, I won’t even TRY to address the erroneous presuppositions implicit in your statements. So full of lies, so full of leftist falsehoods. So ignorant of the true history of the situation. My only guess – you must’ve been born yesterday. No way you actually lived through the events you attempt to describe.
Wrong, Heather, Ronald Reagan did not serve in the military. He indicated at one point that he’d served in World War II, but that was either early onset Alzheimer’s or a lie. Bill Clinton also didn’t serve in the military, and he presided over all eight wreath-laying ceremonies during his two terms. George W. Bush would have been given a dishonorable discharge if his powerful daddy hadn’t intervened after Bush Jr. failed to undergo drug tests, apparently because he didn’t want his use of cocaine to be detected.
But, come on, do you really hate the president so much that you’ll trash the sacrifice made by service members who died in Afghanistan and Iraq by sneering at his visit to their graves as “wandering around the cemetary” [sic]? That’s really low.
And Kevin, I guess facts really do have a liberal bias. The events I described are in the record. The Bush White House was usually as brilliant at playing politics as they were incompetent at governing, but Rove’s plan to make Bush into hero-president by conquering Iraq backfired big time.
My father was in the United States Navy. He always said no matter what you think of the US President he or she is commander of the United States Military. Give them respect because the President respects the Military. Maybe there should of been respect at the laying of the wreath. Too bad my father is no longer with me so I can not asked him how he felt about this.
Hi Pam – Vice President Biden presided over the laying of the wreath at Arlington, and the president attended a ceremony at a military cemetery in Chicago.
Jon-Is it necessary to name call? Prior to your admission, other than the article mentioning “tea-baggers” i don’t remember reading any groups being identified. Because you don’t agree with the President, does it automatically make you a “tea-bagger”. I don’t allign myself with any party and would not call myself a “tea-bagger” just because I don’t agree with the President on his immigration and health care policies. I believe that something should be done about healthcare but not by way of “Obama” care! And, as a side note, considering the genocide that Saddam Husein was committing in his country, why would he not be a modern day Hitler? Wasn’t most of the world againts Hitler for the very thing Husein was doing?
Donna – You should start by asking the tea baggers if name-calling is really necessary. They’re the ones who routinely call the president a socialist Muslim Nazi, which is just utter nonsense. The fact that they can dish out the name-calling but they can’t take it reveals them for what they are: Superannuated school yard bullies.
As to the genocide, that was not on the list of reasons Bush and Cheney provided in their rationale for invading Iraq, probably because the American people would have never signed on to invading Iraq to stop a genocide — just as they weren’t willing to invade Cambodia or Rwanda to stop genocides there.
I’d recommend brushing up on your history of World War II. The United States did not enter that war to stop Hitler’s genocide. The mass murder in the camps was not widely known until after the war, and in fact the United States had a policy of refusing to accept Jewish refugees from Europe that remained in place until after the war.
Jon —
We entered WWII b/c of the Bombing of Pearl Harbor. Was 9/11 not reaon enough to go after those individuals who so blatantly voice their hatred of America, and then DEMONSTRATE it by killing over 3,000 people that September Day???? What difference: Iraq/Japan/Germany when our country was/is being attacked?
As far as your comment….”Superannuated school yard bullies.”….everything anyone has said on this comment board has been denigrated by none other than YOU b/c they don’t agree with your politics! Isn’t THAT in itself being a bully??? Oh, wait second — I guess not. You’re the type of person who is always right and everyone who doesn’t agree with you is always wrong. Oops — guess I’m wrong with my point, too and can expect to be attacked for that POV just as soon as I post this comment……
Terri – It is a vile and malicious lie that Iraq or Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks, which were planned by citizens of Saudi Arabia (our allies) in Afghanistan. There were no Iraqis among the hijackers, and, so far as I know, no Iraqi national has been involved in a terror attack inside the United States, to date. To use your analogy, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, we should have invaded Venezuela to secure its petroleum reserves.
Tea baggers are bullies. Other than name-calling, they have nothing. They voted for Bush and the Republicans and then sat silently by while Bush ripped up the Constitution, lied about his reasons for invading Iraq — a massive screw-up that has cost the lives of thousands of people and a trillion dollars or more, so far — and then wrecked the economy.
If tea baggers were truly independent, not just Republican tools, they would have been in the streets when Bush and the Republicans brought this great country to its knees. Interestingly, however, it wasn’t until Obama was elected that tea baggers got angry. The first tea bag protest was in February 2009, less than a month after Obama was inaugurated. As much as the left loathed Bush — and, unlike tea baggers’ blind irrational hatred of Obama, there were legitimate reasons to oppose Bush — they waited two years before they protested against him.
But, hey, if you’ll identify errors of fact that I have made here, I’ll be happy to own up to them.
Let’s not re-write history. It was Saddam’s failure to meet the requirements of UN Resolutions 678, 687, and 1441, that Bush et’all used to push for attacking Iraq, NOT WMD’s… …the WMD “lies” came later. Saddam had plenty of time to meet the UN demands; he chose to “play games” instead. If we stick to TRUE history, Resolution 678 gave the authority to use force… …an honest debate would be “did the US act unilaterally? The UN Security Council was playing chicken sh_t world politics, as usual. Constitutionally, I’m not so sure we should have invaded so fast… …but our similar Constitutional debate in the 1930’s allowed Hitler to build up his war machine resulting in a prolonged war, millions dead in gas chambers, and larger losses of American soldiers… …all good reasons for intense debate, then swift action. Hind-sight is always easy. What if Hitler had a nuke? His “likeness” soon will.
Tim – You’re the one who is rewriting history. I didn’t base what I said on “hindsight” — I was paying full, rapt attention in real time, at the time. Bush ordered the inspectors to stop before they’d finished fulfilling the UN mandate, because he was desperate to suppress their findings that there were no WMD because those findings would expose the lies he, Cheney and the others had been telling in an attempt to dupe American citizens and the rest of the world into believing there was a legitimate reason to invade.
You’re simply wrong about the timeline on the WMD lies. They started after Labor Day in 2002 — remember Chief of Staff Andrew Card telling a reporter that they would start “marketing” the war after Labor Day? In October 2002 — five months before the invasion — Bush rolled out the nuclear “mushroom cloud” warning:
There are only two options about this and the other “mushroom cloud” statements. 1) Bush knew there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq and he was lying. Or 2) he didn’t know, which would make him guilty of incompetence beyond anything the world has seen to date. In either case — lies on the order of a war crime or gross official negligence — his actions led to the needless deaths of tens of thousands of people and the wasting of over $1 trillion of the taxpayers’ money so far.
Five months later, on March 17, 2003, three days before the invasion, Bush ordered the abrupt, premature termination of the weapons inspections in Iraq:
AP, March 18, one day before the invasion:
The military invasion of Iraq began in Baghdad on March 20, 2003, at 5:34 a.m. — which was March 19 at 9:34 p.m. EST in the United States.
The inspectors conducted inspections from November 2002 until March 18, 2003. They filed reports on these inspections, so it is simply antifactual to assert that it was “Saddam’s failure to meet the requirements of UN Resolutions 678, 687, and 1441” that triggered the invasion.
None of the actual experts then thought Saddam had nuclear capabilities. What they suspected was that he still had Al-Samoud missiles hidden in the desert. But even if he’d had a thousand Al-Samouds, he was hardly a threat that warranted taking a great nation to war. After all, North Korea developed nukes on Bush’s watch, but he didn’t invade and occupy the northern peninsula.
By late 2002, Iraq was completely strapped down by the naval and air forces of US and Britain. If Saddam had launched even a single missile at Israel, it would have been over for him, and he knew it. The notion that we had to invade because he was hiding Al-Samouds was a red herring. Cheney and Bush were going in no matter what.
It wasn’t all about the oil — Bush had domestic political objectives too; Rove timed the invasion so that, had they not botched it, combat would have been over and a new Jeffersonian democracy would have been established in Iraq before the 2004 primaries began, which would have allowed Bush to campaign as a war-hero president and win in a landslide, but instead they had to rig the ballots in Ohio in order to win in a squeaker.