When I first heard about this joke without any details, I thought it sounded pretty tasteless. A war shown to be without cause, thousands dying, etc. Burned me up some.
But when I read about it in more detail, for some intangible reason it seems less tasteless, and just self-deprecating. Maybe I thought about it too much, and it lost emotional impact, or something. I’m sure it helps that I haven’t lost anybody to the war, too.
Seriously, it doesn’t sound tasteless to me, just a little self-deprecating humor that the Big Bad WMD Stockpiles weren’t as big or as bad as they were claiming.
In a similar vein, it’s worth digging up “The Last Days of Bill Clinton,” a video done by the White House for a similar (same?) event. Bill Clinton is shown putzing around the White House, bored silly, waiting for Bush to get inaugurated so he can leave. Clinton ends up washing a car, mooching snacks in the kitchen, getting a staffer to teach him how to surf the internet – funny stuff.
I don’t think I’m qualified to decide if it’s tasteless, since I have no friends or relatives who were killed in a war predicated on the hunt for WMD. Why not ask the parents of dead soldiers how they feel about it?
Oh wiat, maybe I am qualified after all. It’s disgusting and if Bush had any concept of what the word “ashamed” meant he would feel it.
I’m not personally offended, because if it was anyone other than the President of the USA, it would be a funny self-deprecating gag. However, I think that particular office is held to a higher standard, and it was stupid to do - sure as shit someone will be offended.
And as a complete hijack, this is the second time in about a week that someone NOT in San Diego has linked to a story from the Signon San Diego website. Are you really reading the San Diego U-T website, or are you getting your news from some sort of compilation service? Just out of curiosity…
If it was anyone but Bush it’d be funny, but as it is, it seems to be making a joke of the last year, in which not much was really accomplished, except a lot of people died.
I have a friend in the Army Reserves who was shipped over to Iraq. He just came back, but has not returned to work so I have not talked to him. We talked about the war and the reasons for it before he was deployed. He really believed that WMD story and believed it was a good reason to go over and fight. It seemed clear to me that his chain of command was pushing this story as well, probably as a motivation tool. Now, I don’t blame unit commanders and the like for motivating the troops and keeping morale high, nor do I fault my friend for believing what he did.
I do fault the President for pressing the issue of WMD as the reason for the war. To joke about it is a slap in the face to those who put their life on the line, and he could do no worse if he actually pissed on the graves of those who fell.
I think the Democrats would do well to run an ad with Bush’s ‘joke’ being read by a voice-over while footage of a military funeral played on screen. Maybe the ad could be aired on Memorial Day.
If he’d had the guts to come out in public and admit that his administration had fucked up in using the WMDs as an excuse to go to war, and if he admitted that it was either a massive failure of intelligence (best case) or an outright lie (worst case), then i could cut him a little slack for making a self-depreciating joke about it.
But he remains as obstinate as ever, and as such has no cause to be making light of the situation in any way whatsoever.
No, I don’t think the DNC should use this in an ad. There are plenty of other things to ding Bush over they can use instead. Heck, have you read this week’s Boondocks?
I’ve yet to be offended by a joke and I’ve heard some really tasteless ones in my time. Fifteen people I knew died on 9/11 and I still managed to laugh at a joke about 9/11 two days later. Of course I sure as hell wouldn’t tell the joke and cringed while laughing but sometimes laughter at a joke is just a kneejerk to the surprise of the punchline.
It was tasteless, and not something Bush should be making jokes about at this point.
If we had ever found any, this joke would be funny. We haven’t found them, and we are at war because of them.
