Bush's attachment to Israel started with trip to the Holy Land

[ECH1969]

If there's a starting point for George W. Bush's attachment to Israel, it's the day in late 1998 when he stood on the hilltop where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and, eyes brimming with tears, read aloud from his favorite hymn, "Amazing Grace."

"He was very emotional. It was a tear-filled experience," said Matthew Brooks, a prominent Jewish Republican who escorted Bush, then governor of Texas, and three other GOP governors on the Middle East visit. "He brought Israel back home with him in his heart. I think he came away profoundly moved."

Eight years later, Bush is living up to his reputation as the most pro-Israel president ever. As Israel's military action in Lebanon heads into its fourth week, the president is standing firm against growing international pressure for an immediate cease-fire. His stance has alienated European allies and fueled anti-American sentiment in the Arab world, but Brooks and other pro-Israel activists couldn't be more pleased.

"He is not only the most pro-Israel president, he's redefined what it means to be pro-Israel," said Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. "People used to talk about `ending the cycle of violence.' He doesn't do that.

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/politics/15190977.htm

[JackNewtown]

1. National interests were revealed to him on that hill

What a basis for formulating your views on a key nation. :sarcasm:

[niyad]

2. gee, and I thought the chimp had basically never been outside the states

before he stole the oval office. was I misinformed?

[merci_me]

12. That's the same thing

I heard. Except for his trips to Mexico, which being governor of Texas, isn't exactly a trip out of the country.

And wasn't it highly written about, after he was "declared" president, that his trip to Canada was (other than Mexico) his first trip "abroad".

It was something I always wondered about, since his father was Ambassador to China and VP then President, that * never even was intellectually curious enough to hop a ride. It always made me think that maybe with the locked drug charges in Houston, the guy couldn't qualify for a passport, until the Supreme Court stepped in and anointed him.

[Tom Joad]

3. Then why is he supporting its worst policies that will endanger it?

[sweetheart]

4. mis-framed from the outset, "the holy land" == earth nt

[Fridays Child]

5. How touching. Eyes brimming. Amazing Grace.

Hogwash.

[kurth]

10. How many Lebanese are saying "Please don't kill me"?

What a freak.

[kurth]

6. No more talk about "ending the cycle of violence"

Just keep bombing Lebanon into the Stone Age.

That ought to teach the Lebanese women and children a lesson.

[ECH1969]

13. No more ending the cycle of violence

The goal now is continuing that cycle.

[HereSince1628]

7. I doubt it.

Bush's support for Israel probably started earlier. At least by the late 1950's and early 1960's with the popularity of the movie version of Leon Uris' Exodus. It was the first (select one of the following) a. brain washing b. educational exposure that most baby-boomers had on the jubject.

[ananda]

8. Umm.. p r o Israel???

I'd say that Israel is taking itself on a suicide binge at the rate it's going.

[cynatnite]

9. It started the day he figured out that pandering to his RW base...

has some benefits.

[Reckon]

11. It might have been the same hill top

where the evil one promised Jesus the world if he would follow him.

Shrub has the voices he hears mixed up.


Edit: BTW, tears while reading the Bible was a good photo op. "Mission Accomplished"

[Maraya1969]

16. Yea or maybe he was talking to that burning bush..or was it burning pot?

[LSparkle]

14. As everything is with this simpleton, it's PERSONAL, all about his

"love" for the Jewish people, not about his responsibility as president of this country to espouse policies that benefit our nation (and hopefully the rest of the world). He just doesn't get it that he has to do what's best for EVERYONE, not just what's in his alleged heart.

[Reckon]

15. Armed Madhouse..

It's about what enriches their pockets.

[LSparkle]

17. MUST get that book!!!! That and "Conservatives w/o Conscience"

GREAT summer reading!

[EST]

18. O K Down in the mud...

George Walker Bush is a mental and moral pipsqueak who has never had a magnanimous streak and to whom the outer world exists somewhere around Schroedinger's vaunted pussy--it only has any reality as it relates to him and his desperately selfish and self-absorbed universe.

The only epiphany he's ever experienced came during that beautiful, time variable moment that sometime arises when one is just stoned and drunk enough to experience--
!PROFOUND REVELATION!
When you just KNOW you have all the solutions to the world's problems.

If I were Israel, I would not be willing to associate with that crazy little creep. Well, maybe only as much as I had to, in order to manipulate him to get what I want.

Right now, the the world's opinion of Israel is degraded by its incestuous relationship to the US and that of the US by its relationship to Israel.

[niyad]

19. he supposedly had his "not gonna drink anymore" epiphany right here

at the broadmoor. too bad, I used to LOVE the broadmoor.

[ECH1969]

22. lol

[shain from kane]

20. So it really is a Crusade. n/t

[VelmaD]

21. Maybe instead of Amazing Grace...

he should have read the actual Sermon on the Mount. He certainly needs a refrsher in who exactly the lord considered "blessed".