The soldiers Bush didn't visit on Thanksgiving

By Joan Vennochi, 12/11/2003

THANKSGIVING in Baghdad was a political success for President Bush, and more. Even if the turkey he hoisted was chosen strictly for its photogenic qualities, the event showed the president connecting in a human way with men and women, far from home, in a place where life is blown apart in a cruel instant. Watching those young faces reminded all Americans, Bush backers or not, that war puts the country's flesh and blood on the line, not just its national pride or presidential politics.

For all that it conveyed, however, the Bush Thanksgiving extravaganza showed only one tiny slice of the daily, ugly reality of war and its aftermath for thousands of US service personnel and those who care for them...

"My `Bush Thanksgiving' was a little different . . . I spent it at the hospital taking care of a young West Point lieutenant wounded in Iraq. He had stabilization of his injuries in Iraq and then two long surgeries here for multiple injuries; he's just now stable enough to send back to the USA. After a few bites of dinner I let him sleep, and then cried with him as he woke up from a nightmare. When he pressed his fists into his eyes and rocked his head back and forth he looked like a little boy. They all do, all 19 on the ward that day, some missing limbs, eyes, or worse...

"It's too bad Mr. Bush didn't add us to his holiday agenda. The men said the same, but you'll never read that in the paper. Mr. President would rather lift fake turkeys for photo ops, it seems. Maybe because my patients wouldn't make very pleasant photos . . . most don't look all that great, and the ones with facial wounds and external fixation devices look downright scary. And a heck of a lot of them can't talk, anyway, and some never will talk again. . . Well, this is probably more than you want to know, but there's no spin on this one. It's pure carnage . . .

Howdy's support for the troops is limited to the high profile photo ops he gets at their expense. And no major US media outlet questioned the flummery and feel-good images from Howdy's visit to Iraq.

Bush laughs off critics of 'spoils of war' bidding

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

12 December 2003

George Bush poured fuel on the flames of the Iraq contracts dispute yesterday with a sneering dismissal of a suggestion by the German Chancellor that the decision to bar Germany, France Russia and Canada from bidding might violate international law.

"International law? I'd better call my lawyer," the American President joked in response to a reporter's question at the White House.

Gerhard Schröder had spoken earlier after a meeting in Berlin with Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general. Mr Annan called the decision by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, "unfortunate" and likely to damage attempts to rebuild transatlantic ties bruised by disagreement over the war. The EU is examining the legality of the US moves to stop countries that had not participated in the war from bidding for the $18.6bn (£10.7bn) of contracts, on vague "national security" grounds.

Democrats seized on the episode as further evidence of Bush diplomatic blundering. "How do we get a coalition together when we're putting it out on a government website that a country like Canada is a national security risk to the United States?" Marty Meehan, a Democratic member of the House Armed Services Committee, said.

Howdy and Co seem hell-bent on alienating every ally we have ever had, or are likely to have. And he wants his consigliori, James Baker, to sweet talk Europe and Russia into restructuring Iraqs debt? They're just going to tell Baker to "Fuck off.", leaving American tax-payers saddled with both the federal deficit the Adminstration is running up AND Iraqs national debt. In the meantime, Howdy's corporate sponsors are laughing all the way to the bank.

Presidents Remade by War

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Anyone who has listened to President Bush's recent speeches about the need to promote democracy in the Arab-Muslim world can't but walk away both impressed and dubious — impressed because promoting democracy in the Arab world is something no president before has advocated with Mr. Bush's vigor, and dubious because this sort of nation-building is precisely what Mr. Bush spurned throughout his campaign. Where did Mr. Bush's passion for making the Arab world safe for democracy come from?

Though the president mentioned this theme before the war, it was not something he stressed with the public, Congress or the U.N. in justifying an Iraq invasion. Rather, he relied primarily on the urgent need to pre-emptively strip Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

A cynic might say that Mr. Bush was always interested only in stripping Iraq of its W.M.D. But with no W.M.D. having been unearthed thus far in Iraq, and with the costs of the war in lives and dollars soaring, the president felt he needed a new rationale. And so he focused on the democratization argument.

But there is another explanation, one that is not incompatible with the first but is less overtly cynical. It is a story about war and events and how they can transform a president.

"It often happens," argues Michael Sandel, the Harvard political theorist, "that presidents, under the pressure of events, especially during war, find themselves needing to articulate new and more persuasive rationales for their policies — especially when great sacrifices are involved.

The only sacrifices currently being made in Iraq and, lest we forget, Afghanistan, are the lives of US troops and innocent civilians. Here in the States, we get testy if we have to pay more than $1.75 for a gallon of gas. And the Adminstration urges us to go shopping in support of the war on terrorism...so much for biting the bullet in support of the war effort.

In securing the Homeland, some 6,000 airport baggages screeners were cut from the federal payroll to save money, yet $87 billion could be found to pay for the tax-cuts to Howdy's campaign contributors. Chemical factories, ready made WMD's near and in major US metropolitan areas continue to go unprotected, and legislation to force them to bring their security measures up to the threat has been killed in Congress...at the behest of the petro-chem industry.

Sorry, I got off track there...Bush's shift to justifying the war on Iraq as part of spreading democracy rings hollow in the face of all that has gone before it. It has the sound of the death row conversion of a convicted mass murderer...or a whore preaching about the virtues of chastity in Sunday school.