boo boo foo
Oh no boo, you cut me to the quick. No boo, it was not the masses of straight dopers that addicted me to their responses. It was you, boo. It was your responses that that led me to smiling. Watch–> 
Happy Thanksgiving!
I don’t criticize what Bush does because I hate him, I hate him because of the things he does.
They’re not ALLOWED to say they’re unhappy about, milroy, they get court martialed if they do.
Showing support for the troops means not sending them off to die for no fucking reason. It doesn’t mean serving them some turkey and bullshit.
We shall see whether it was support for the troops or a photo op for a campaign commercial.
Highly suspect.
Will Bush be solely to blame for the up and coming Photo Ops, ect that are used by his supporters?
Do you actually think that there are Republicans etc that would not take advantage of it?
DTC, you are the one claiming that the President’s visit to our troops did not make them happy. Since you made the claim, prove it.
I was happy when Nixon made his secret trip to China. Now Bush has made a secret trip to Iraq, and it’ll probably be good for the troop’s morale. I’m happy for them. Bush did a nice thing. Sometimes even evil people do nice things. There’s nothing to be gained by bitching about it, except a reputation for irrational hatred.
Yes. That’s the reason he staged this stunt, so his supporters could pimp the photos in his election campaign. He is solely responsible for his own PR stunts.
Of course not.
Pay attention, dude. Other people asserted that it did make the troops happy. I merely asked for proof of that assertion. The campaign commercial…I mean news coverage…doesn’t prove anything.
You know what would have been a really nice thing? Not killing his own troops for no damn reason. That would have rocked.
You really have gone off the deep end, haven’t you?
So, Brutus you think he’s getting troops killed for a good reason, I take it? What reason would that be?
Well sure, but that comes under the evil clause. It’s not as if him being a generally bad guy precludes him from everdoing anything decent. You seem to be reaching pretty hard to find malign intent in the president’s holiday jaunt.
And I hate the idea of even vaguely agreeing with brutus, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
See, guys like Diogenes CLAIM to support the military, but get them just a littlle worked up, and this is the vile crap that rises to the surface.
When Sam said “you guys just don’t get it” he wasn’t kidding. One guy asks for a “cite” and now this.
I spent a decade in the .mil, a few years doing VIP work, and was at Camp Bondsteel when the CINC arrived for turkey day in '99.
Be assured that no “prescreening” takes place, not even with announced visits. That’s just not how the military works. Anyone who wants to see the VIP’s is free to do so, assuming they aren’t working, generally. By the same token, no-one is forced to go, either. It’s just amusing as hell to hear various “theories” by obvious “bush haters” on other threads on other boards, rabid conjecture that somehow the whole thing was staged. They don’t “get it” either.
I think that’s going too far, friend. The staged photo op on the USS Lincoln will only be used by the Democrats, and doubtless Rove knows that and wouldn’t make quite the same overconfident mistake again. These Baghdad photos aren’t even potentially useful to him in a campaign - they’re only a reminder that massive numbers of our people are still hunkered down in a war zone and getting killed almost daily so long after the declared end of “major combat operations”, whatever the hell that means. It can also only remind people of the furtive and brief nature of the visit, and of Bush’s own “military service”. I don’t see a political upside from this, only avoidance of the downside of not doing it.
Aside from the obvious boost to troop morale it was a simple statement to the people of Iraq that the US will not cut-and-run like so many other military interventions (or non-interventions such as the Shite and Kurd uprisings). This is what is expected from the commander-in-chief.
Bush:
You’re engaged in a difficult mission. Those who attack our coalition forces and kill innocent Iraqis are testing our will. They hope we will run. We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost in casualties, defeat a brutal dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.
If this political posturing bothers the Bush hating crowd maybe they can take the day off and discuss Senator “hey look at me I"m in Afghanistan” Clinton. I spilled a perfectly good glass of wine laughing when she said “we” will not abandon Afghanistan.
I thought it was obvious. King-Priest Bush needs the skeletons of thousands to build his Bone Ziggaraut on the fields of Texas!
What’s “vile” about it? It’s the truth. Did you miss the part where I said I was IN the military. The armed forces are not filled with geniuses.