Here’s the partial transcript:
There’s lying. There’s a pattern here… This White House needs to understand… every single day you ask them to serve without the resources they ask for without the reinforcements they need they are in more danger. I believe there is dithering going on and there is waffling…
(On the president’s photo-op at Dover) But I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don’t understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. That’s really hard for me to get my head around. I think its an honorable and important thing for us to pay tribute. There’s no greater sacrifice people make to the nation. It was a surpsising way for the president to choose to do this. I’d like to add the most important way for the president to pay tribute to those who sacrifice is to back them up.
Obama: Saluting for the Cameras
Canada Free Press
Presidents engage in all kinds of ceremonial events. Every Thanksgiving, they “pardon” a turkey so it doesn’t end up on the White House menu. They make sure they are photographed with the winning teams of various sporting series. Every Easter they can be found at the White House Egg Roll accompanied, I have always suspected, by a Secret Service agent in a large bunny costume.
The other evening, shortly after midnight, President Obama made sure to be photographed standing in line with military personnel and some civilians in attendance as the dead, including three drug enforcement agents, from Afghanistan were returned home at Dover Air Force base. Our military casualties are received in a solemn ceremony few except those in attendance ever witness.
Presidents have never participated in this ceremony. The caskets are a too vivid reminder that part of their job is to send troops in harm’s way. President Bush preferred to meet with the families of fallen heroes.
~snipet ~
President Obama wasn’t there to honor those fallen soldiers or marines. He was there to be seen saluting.
Obama was there because, during the campaign he had used the war in Afghanistan as a way to criticize former President Bush’s decision to depose Iraq’s dictator only to find himself in unforeseen and ill-considered circumstances that required years and a change of strategy to redeem.
~snipet~
The strategy concerning Afghanistan was handed to him by the existing Bush administration in a report prepared for his assumption of the office. His hand-picked general in the field says we will lose without increasing present troop strength.
Obama’s presence that evening was about perceptions and imagery. It was his way of trying to influence public opinion about his failure to act.
Increasingly, questions are being raised about his campaign statements and presumably his commitment to pursue the Taliban and al Qaeda in a vigorous fashion. The enemy knows it and it too is doing what it can to influence public opinion; they have stepped up the killing of American troops.
Frankly, knowing that he had never worn the uniform of his nation, it bothered me that he would stand there in the dark giving a salute. The closest he ever got to wearing a uniform and saluting in his past was when he was in the Boy Scouts—the Indonesian Boy Scouts.
There is something coldly calculating about using the returning battle dead to try to bolster an image of patriotism and commitment to military action, but that is what this President is all about, the image of things, statements about things in which he does not believe and intends to “transform.”
Wild Thing’s comment……..
I posted about othis the other day, but I wanted to post about what Liz Cheney had to say and also the article by the Canada Free Press. It is so horrid to have Obama as CIC and when other countries are even disgusted with him as well as all of us are, it is even worse.
Thank you Liz Cheney and thank you to the Canada Free Press.
….Thank you Jack for sending this to me.
Army Combat Engineers
67-69
Jack’s blog is Conservative Insurgent
Thank you Chrissie.
Obama should be beaten for this outlandish act.
He has no shame.
Liz Cheney is great. There will be a place for her in the near future in some important position.
obama lives by the photo op and the lie.
This is the first time obamamao has showed up for one of these. Out of 16 families only one gave him permission to participate, hence the one recorded.
I remember the left was always bitching, why doesn’t Bush show up when these caskets come home. Now we find out he did. But made no mention of that fact, he kept it between the families and himself.
With all of Bush’s faults this is one area, he was Aces. He was honest, sincere and he cared about the troops and the best part, the troops knew it.
Bush/Cheney, even gave obama a plan to follow, which obama made mention of in a speech from one of his teleprompters in March 2009, then he started backing away from it and claimed there was no plan.
I like the way Buish did it, he showed
a lot of respect to the families.
Thank you everyone.