Bush reflects on military sacrifice = WTF!?!

[bridgit]

:wtf: 'WASHINGTON -- President Bush celebrated the contributions of veterans and active-duty military ahead of the Memorial Day holiday, saying Saturday that the service of U.S. troops in Iraq has produced democracy for that country and made Americans safer.

"Because of their courage and sacrifices, Iraq has a free government that will be a strong and capable ally in the global war on terror," the president said in his weekly radio address.' http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_Bush.html

while in the Hague, can he be declared insane and taken away like Hannibal

[applegrove]

1. Was a great article in Harper's this week - that goes into how the

Bush & GOP "narrative" is not working because they never bothered to asked the country to sacrifice for this war.. so the myths don't stick like they used to.

[bridgit]

2. you got it, our armed forces were thrown into ENRON/Bush's...

personal war & used as a security expedition :thumbsdown:

[applegrove]

6. By giving tax cuts to the wealthy and telling everyone else to shop -

it has been a windfall for the richest 1/3 of the country. But if people are not invested in the war.. how are they going to buy a myth used to make heros outta nuts who make shit up ... aka Bush.

I once asked some freepers "what has your president asked you to sacrifice in this time of war?" and they were confused. They had not obviously thought of the "notion" of sacrifice.

Bush Veteran's Day speech last November didn't really go into sacrifice like most speeches have in the past.

[bridgit]

7. oh yeah, i got a big ole kick after 9-11 when the nation shut down...

the one thing they never counted on was Americans innate ability to 'jump back in the tall grass' as it were (we are the minute men not them). the airlines came back up, but no one was flying, no one was buying anything; so they send Poppy & Babs on a cruise out of one of Jeb's Florida holiday ports while Duupf goes out front (talk about a family enterprise) and tells everyone else to go to the mall and buy stuff cause this economy actually does float ON US, we the people, but then it's all like...

I SHOULD DO WHAT AGAIN :wtf: GO TO THE FREAKING MALL WITH MY LAST $10 AND BUY SOME BENETTON SWEATER MADE IN CHINA FOR $80!?! ARE YOU FREAKING GOOFY OR JUST NUTZ!!!

[applegrove]

8. That's what I mean. People either benefitted from Bush tax cuts or

were aghast at his policies. Very few were in any way connected to the costs of war.

Remember the economy bounced back very quickly. Most countries at war suffer huge losses (in terms of the economy and loosing sons & daughters - and people sacrificing goods and sugar - planting victory gardens - not using petrol - etc.). Bush rules in a divide and conquer way. Nobody sacrificed. Except those hurt by his policies that had nothing to do with war. And of course the children and grandchildren who will actually have to pay for the war.

[bridgit]

11. oh yes, i do agree, the bush family is raping this nation in the course...

treating her like one, big, distress centered growth industry. that's where they feel, imo, the big long term bucks to be: bombs, bullets, whole blood products, tami-flu, and leveraged buyouts of teetering concerns (if not indeed pushed over by their very acts, deeds & policies) for pennies on the dollar ala Carlyle, republican no-bid cronyism

[Jade Fox]

9. I was thinking this morning about how....

the word PATRIOTISM has changed from something which implies self-sacrifice, into something whose underlying message is LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE on both a national and personal level. That's why so many of today's flag-waving patriots feel no compunction to enlist in the military themselves, or give up anything else in the name of their country. Indeed, they expect to benefit from their "patriotism".

[applegrove]

12. They expect to benefit from their patriotism cause they are being

pandered too with superficial fears. The fact that their marriages will not be improved if two same sex people get married seems lost on them. They feel "baser instincts" satisfied.. mostly fear. They are given fears.. then that fear is solved by some GOP future policy or speech. Then they run around and with excess anxiety.. because they are no longer whole... remarrying in covenant marriages, volunteering for border defense as minutemen (as opposed to the war that is going on)and generalized fear that the GOP keeps stiring up.

Problems like marriage, abortion, immigration are not really meant to be solved by the GOP in any real way. Mostly when large groups of people are turned into sheep - or become a greater "organ" to the tricksters who "cultivate them".. the fear just keeps on keeping on and the myths start to grow.

Fact is .. so much of America has been diminished. By the way debates and issues have been used. Surely if abortion is an abomination (and I can see that point of view) cutting the number of abortions would be the most important thing.. and you do that with health care and pre-ventive birth control or the morning after pill. But the GOP doesn't want the issue solve or improved. So they attack these things.

[Jade Fox]

15. I agree, the point is to keep people afraid....

because fear is guaranteed to stop people from thinking.

But this is methodology is starting to backfire on Bushco. What a lot of people who rejoice in Bush's low poll numbers don't realize is that many of the Bush faithful are mad at him because he has stirred up their fears and kept none of his promises to placate those fears. These people have no real problem with the Bushco agenda. And one can only stay frightened about the same stuff for so long. Like a drug, it begins to wear off. Bushco doesn't seem to get that their fear-mongering needs to evolve to remain effective, and that they can't beat the same drum in the same way indefinitely. I think there may be a time limit on how long real-life problems, like the need for abortion availability, can be used as unsolvable wedge issues. I also get the feeling that many in America are beginning to long for the ability to really talk about and solve our problems as a nation.

I measure a lot of this stuff by a Fox-watching, freeper-type co-worker of mine. She's clearly beginning to feel used by the Bush Administration, but she still shares their "values" as they and the Neocons continue to present them. When the contradictions get to be too much, she just stops thinking, which only works as long as nothing is real. She's got a son-in-law in Iraq. Things may get very real for her and her family soon.

[applegrove]

16. Very true: "I also get the feeling that many in America are beginning "

"I also get the feeling that many in America are beginning to long for the ability to really talk about and solve our problems as a nation."

The immediate victims of the fear mongering and tribalism have been longing for normal from the get go. We are angry and furious and scared and weeping. The ones who fell for it.. some are waking up. Don't know about the others.

I read something the other day. Hatred is projected onto people who threaten to ruin a way of life - even when they are minding their own business and just asking for a normal life and asking for the right to be left alone or make a living. When your way of life is actually threatened.. as in liberals way of life (enlightenment attacked by neocons).. then it is rightful anger.

But for those who rely on the cheap oil economy the most.. perhaps farmers and communters or rural people..they hate the same way the poor whites were convinced to hate the blacks and see them as causing poverty..when it was actually inequality and robber barons that kept them poor.

The people at the top in the oil industry cannot stand the idea that they will not be buying oil somewhere else for a few dollars and selling it for 5 times that much. So they hate A-rabs and democracy that allows for nationalized industry. And they have convinced so much of the USA that oil is where it is at. When in fact, as the Brits on England found when they used fallow, it is really all about who has the new new technology to overcome the problem of exhaustion of ressources (the Romans exhausted their land and that was it). And the oil industry even exhausts the climate as it goes.. knowing that that too will take "their fur coats off them". Except that exhausting the planet will just increase the need for new technology.

I would guess too that radical zionists see the winds of change and want to remake the world into a place where all their dreams come true. Not that it ever has for them. Or ever will. People want peace in the middle east if they can get it.

All adults need to be adults and not infantalized objects or tools of somebody else. But some will be convinced by the neocons and the myths.. to grow down. That you really don't need to live and let live.

Very sad.

Sorry it happened to the USA. Every so often.. a group of nuts get together and feed off each other. And destroy lives in their wake.

But yes.. there will be much joy and jubilation when the Dems win and adults finally get back into power. And problems are solved as adults.. indeed.... problems are solved instead of made up or jacked up or ignored.

Longing is the right word.

[tabasco]

3. Bush and Cheney are murderers.

They launched an unjustified war of aggrerssion in Iraq and every soldier that dies is another crime.

They don't give a shit about our military. If they did, they would not have rushed the nation to war on LIES !

Neocon / corporate imperialism. And these assholes have the temerity to wave the flag and cry "support the troops."

[bridgit]

4. the really sick part about it for me is that they are 'good with it'...

Cheney/Nixon's Ghost/Bush/Rove/Matalin & BFEE------>to the Hague

[subterranean]

5. Mission accomplished!

Bush says Iraq now has a free and democratic government and is a strong and capable ally. Great! So our troops can go home now, right?

[bridgit]

10. judging from the gobbledygook he spewed at the commencement...

over the weekend; our troops are NEVER coming home, this is their new cold war, the one they've been praying for since the last one ended, generation after generation...to their mind never ending...............

[progressivebydesign]

13. Nope, the Hague can't touch him thanks to the congressional repubs

They passed a law a few years ago that authorize military force against the Hague if they are trying any ELECTED OR APPOINTED US citizen, or military member. So.. no.. the Hague can't touch him.

[bridgit]

14. i hear Negroponte has been given executive power to pardon...

them all

[Amonester]

17. There's something Wrong going on when the criminals have...

...found a way to steal the power that allows them to proclaim laws that effectively put themselves and their criminal activities above previously legitimate laws.

It's like if Al Capone had bought the IRS and had written signing statements that would prevent auditors from screening HIS record...

Crazy, is it not? :crazy:

[Initech]

18. He's a liar and murderer. His dad is a liar and murderer. But...

thanks to them, Iraq is "free". And yet we're not. Fucking scumbags!

[bridgit]

19. they're lying about the 'freedom thing' too...

[Mr_Spock]

20. This mans stupidity knows no bounds

What a crazy time for this country :(

[bridgit]

21. do you think Bush is beginning to get a clue, or was he TOLD to be...

contrite, i personally do not believe that it is in the Bush family gene pool to admit they are ever part of any problem...it's just not in them

[tanyev]

22. Oh, that's rich.

A man whose family pulled every string they could to keep him out of combat and whose children will never see any combat is pontificating about the glories of veterans' sacrifices in a war he chose to create. Why don't all the soldiers just boo him off the stage whenever he appears in front of them?