Think Progress
Cheney On 4,000 Troop Deaths In Iraq: ‘The President Carries
The Biggest Burden, Obviously’
Filed Under: Iraq, Military
By Satyam on Mar 24th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Cheney On 4,000 Troop Deaths In Iraq: ‘The President Carries
The Biggest Burden, Obviously’»
Across the country today, memorial services will be held to
honor the 4,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq, a tragic milestone
in President Bush’s “surge” effort.
But the White House is trying to gloss over the troop death
marker. President Bush held no public events on the issue
today, although he briefly thanked the “courageous people
willing to serve” while at the State Department today.
Moreover, in an interview with ABC News today, Vice President
Cheney expressed gross callousness about the 4,000 dead
troops, implying to Martha Raddatz that the troops volunteered
for duty.
Who, in Cheney’s eyes, is hurting even more than the troops
and their families? George W. Bush:
The president carries the biggest burden, obviously. He’s the
one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans,
but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the
all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go
in harm’s way for the rest of us.
Watch it:
The White House has frequently expressed a “misguided sense of
bravado,” as Dan Froomkin put it, in comparing its efforts to
that of American soldiers. Some lowlights of its detachment:
– “Believe me, no one suffers more than their President and I
do when we watch this.” [Laura Bush, 4/25/07]
– “The President is in the war every day…on the frontlines.”
[Tony Snow, 6/14/07]
To this day, Bush seems ignorant of the horrors of war.
Earlier this month, he told troops in Afghanistan that
“confronting danger” was, in his eyes, “romantic.” Bush has
even said he would love to serve in Iraq, but unfortunately
he’s “too old.”
Where does this detachment come from? Bush himself explained
in February 2007:
I can only tell you what people on the ground, whose judgment
— it’s hard for me, living in this beautiful White House, to
give you an *****sment, firsthand *****sment. I haven’t been
there; you have, I haven’t.
UpdateSilent Patriot responds:
I can only speak for myself here, but I reckon that many of
the brave young men and women who volunteered after 9/11 did
so with the expectation that they would be hunting down those
that actually attacked us that day; not that they would be put
in an impossible situation (in a country that had nothing
whatsoever to do with the attack on us) where they are
expected to mediate a religious civil war that has raged for
thousands of years.
Comments
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/24/cheney-burden/
--
A government, of, by, and, for: Rich, Elite, Freemasons.
But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the
light:
for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.
The light ****neth in darkness;
and the darkness comprehended it not.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be
single,
thy whole body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of
darkness.
If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great
is that darkness!
Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,
and Christ shall give thee light.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
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