[QUOTE=Liberal]
You could look at it that way, or you could look at it Bill Thomas’s way.
According to the Cove Herald, he and his wife conceived the idea themselves because of what the medal — and the president — meant to them. They enlisted the assitance of their Congressman, John Carter, to whom they presented a citation they drew up themselves and signed, along with the medal, and asked him to forward it to President Bush.
You’re wrong about the public ceremony, but you’re right about the fact that meetings with the president are rare. Few ever get into the Oval Office. But then, gifts to the president aren’t frequently delivered in person by a Congressman either. But when they are, I doubt that brokering a private meeting is anything unusual.
Honestly, the only thing unusual about this is its irony — the Purple Heart and President Bush. He certainly hasn’t earned any sort of recognition along those lines from the military. But this wasn’t from the military. It was from Bill Thomas of Copperas Cove, Texas, who lives about 50 miles from Crawford. It seems to me that a meeting, which Thomas called “one of the highlights of our life”, was the least the president could have done to thank him for the gesture.
This thread pitted Bush “for accepting the Purple Heart”. When I clicked on the thread, I expected to see something about a Bush croney at the Pentagon awarding him a Purple Heart medal, much in the same way he has awared the Medal of Freedom to his cronies. But instead, I found a weird take on a straightforward story, with a righteous indignation not extended to far more bizarre Oval Office shennanigans that preceeded Bush. There’s lots of misstatement of fact in here about the nature of the meeting, and who asked for it, and so forth. It’s all very un-Dopish.
Meanwhile, Bush did nothing wrong here. He handled it exactly right, even stating that he did not deserve it. Keep pushing this one, and it’ll bite you in the ass. Only the most deluded Bush haters will buy it, and they’re already sold. I despise Bush as much as anyone. But even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while, and he found one here. I believe it is Thomas’s right to decide what to do with his medals. As he points out himself, “I paid for these Purple Hearts with my blood.” Leave him alone to give them to whomever he wishes.
[/QUOTE]
Once again, no one is objecting to Thomas giving away his medal as a gift (as misguided as his gesture may be). It’s Bush arranging to accept it as an award – complete with a mock citation and ceremony – which is offensive. He should have accepted the medal as a gift but rejected the citation along with any pretense that he was personally being awarded.