Stars and Stripes: Bush T-day photo-op soldiers hand-picked

[theivoryqueen]

clip/

Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon-authorized newspaper of the U.S. military, is bucking for a court-martial.



When last we checked in on Stripes, it was reporting on a survey it did of troops in Iraq, finding that half of those questioned described their units' moral as low and their training as insufficient and said they did not plan to reenlist.

With the Pentagon just recovering from that, Stars and Stripes is blowing the whistle on President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, saying the cheering soldiers who met him were pre-screened and others showing up for a turkey dinner were turned away.

clip/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57870-2003Dec11.html

[mw]

1. Everything about this signature Bush

Signature Bush, on many counts:

- An exclusive event, with a "rent a crowd", sold as something that it wasn't.

- At the expense of the troops who are dying for Bush's lie.

- Big lies told, and about AF1, putting the entire air traffic system at peril and lives in danger.

- A fake turkey, held by a fake president.

NOTHING about this loser is real. Except he's a real loser.

[Bozita]

2. What took this story so long to come out?

I wondered about this on Thanksgiving Day.

-snip-

The newspaper (Stars and Stripes), quoting two officials with the Army's 1st Armored Division in an article last week, reported that "for security reasons, only those preselected got into the facility during Bush's visit. . . . The soldiers who dined while the president visited were selected by their chain of command, and were notified a short time before the visit."

The paper also published a letter to the editor from Sgt. Loren Russell, who wrote of the heroism of his soldiers and then added: "magine their dismay when they walked 15 minutes to the Bob Hope Dining Facility, only to find that they were turned away from their evening meal because they were in the wrong unit. . . . They understand that President Bush ate there and that upgraded security was required. But why were only certain units turned away?"

-snip-

[theivoryqueen]

5. dunno - musta taken stars and stripes a while to decide...

after all, they are ostensibly a pro-military publication. I guess they had to do some soul searching....

[pippin]

3. so why are we not surprised?

Everything about this regime is phony down to the fake turkeys.

[kentuck]

4. All hat and no turkey !

:)

[ewagner]

6. Unanswered question

The article says that the soldiers who attended the meal with * were selected by their "chain of command". What criteria were used? Political credentials checked? Demographics (a "quota" for blacks, hispanics etc)? There's a nasty little secret here.

[dove2]

7. good question

with a quick read of the article, you would assume the selection criteria had to do with safety -- but I think you make a better point was it a political selection criteria?

[zbdent]

9. Probably the soldiers who "discovered" the victims of non-hostile

gunshot fatalities. Wonder if those "fallen soldiers" who died of such wounds ever had something nasty to say about their C-in-C?

[northzax]

10. same thing right?

if someone has ever critisised chimpy, he's not a good 'murican, and therefore can't be trusted with the president.

It is a sad time in this country when the President can't trust the military...

[DinahMoeHum]

8. I find greater interest in this article about air traffic safety. . .

and to the extent that squatter in the WH may well have jeopardized the safety of other air travel passengers that night for a cheap political coup:

(snip)
"...air traffic controllers in Britain are seething over the flight, in which the president's 747, falsely identified as a Gulfstream, traveled through British airspace. Prospect, the controllers union in the United Kingdom, says the flight broke international regulations, posed a potential safety threat and exposed a weakness in the air defense system that could be exploited by terrorists.

"'The overriding concern is if the president's men who did this can dupe air traffic control, what's to stop a highly organized terrorist group from duping air traffic control?'" asked David Luxton, Prospect's national secretary. Luxton said the flight was in "breach" of regulations against filing false flight plans set by the International Civil Aviation Organization, which he said should apply to a military aircraft using civilian airspace.

Luxton said that by identifying itself as a Gulfstream V instead of the much larger 747, Air Force One could have put itself and other airplanes in danger. The Gulfstream can climb faster and maneuver more nimbly than a 747, which means controllers could have assumed the president's plane was capable of a collision-avoiding maneuver that it couldn't actually do. And the "wake vortex" of a 747, much larger than a Gulfstream's, could jeopardize smaller planes that were told by unsuspecting controllers to follow in the mislabeled plane's wake..."

(snip)

:grr:

[tom_paine]

11. Potemkin Thanksgiving for a Free-Marker Stalinist Emperor*

Disgusting. The men & women who helped defeat Hitler would NEVER have tolerated this.

But of course, that was in another nation...the Old American Republic.

[betio]

12. Snooooze.....

So what?

You expect him to go to Iraq and NOT pose for pictures. NOT create a few photo-ops? This is SURPRISING to ANYBODY?

Ho hum.