Bortz should have said it was Thanksgiving Breakfast in Iraq
for Dubya.
Care for Cereals with that drumstick ? The Ultimate Early Bird
Dinner took
place at 6 AM on Thanksgiving with President Bush serving
turkey on a
Carlrovezied photo-op...
By courtesy of LT
Wag the Turkey
Surprise Thanksgiving Dinner at 6 AM?
By WAYNE MADSEN *
Yes folks, we are now all bit players in a real-life
version of the
movie "Wag the Dog." President Bush and his GOP
advisers are ecstatic that
the
president made a secret trip to Baghdad to be with U.S. troops
for a
"traditional" Thanksgiving dinner. His polling
numbers -- which I contend
are as fixed as
a Florida election -- will undoubtedly receive a huge boost.
I may be a bit naive, and it has been a while since I
served on active
duty, but I can't recall ever sitting down to Thanksgiving
dinner at 6:00
AM.
Air Force One touched down at Baghdad International Airport,
under cover of
darkness, at 5:20 AM Baghdad time. Bush was on the ground for
two and a half
hours, his plane departing Baghdad at around 7:50 AM.
Considering that it
likely
took some 30 minutes for Bush to disembark from Air Force One
and travel by
a
heavily secured motorcade to the hangar where the troops were
assembled,
that
means our military men and women were downing turkey,
stuffing, cranberry
sauce, pumpkin pie, and non-alcoholic beer at a time when most
people would
be
eating eggs, bacon, grits, home fries, and toast.
But there on national television, when most Americans
were preparing
to
sit down to their own traditional Thanksgiving dinners, we saw
a tape of
President Bush serving mashed potatoes and corn to American
troops at a
"traditional" Thanksgiving meal in the early hours
of the morning. What's
more, when a
clearly exhausted Bush strode around a curtain -- after a
"What's My Line"
mystery guest routine by Iraq proconsul L. Paul Bremer -- 600
American
troops were
said to be "shocked and awed" by Bush's surprise
appearance. I would have
thought most of the troops, many of whom are support personnel
who work
relatively normal working hours, would have been more
surprised when they
were ordered
to get up before sunrise to eat Thanksgiving dinner between
6:00 and 7:30
A.M.
And the abysmal and sycophantic Washington and New York
press corps
seems to have completely missed the Thanksgiving
"breakfast dinner." Chalk
that
up to the fact that most people in the media never saw a
military chow line
or
experienced reveille in their lives. So it would certainly go
over their
heads
that troops would be ordered out of bed to eat turkey and
stuffing before
the
crack of dawn.
Democratic presidential candidates will be scurrying to
regain ground
from Bush's surprise trip and previous indicators that the
economy is on a
rebound. Of course, economic indicators emanate from public
and private
institutions controlled by GOP political operatives. With an
all time high
of 4000
people in Washington, DC having their Thanksgiving dinners
courtesy of DC's
Central
Kitchen for the homeless, those economic indicators seem as
phony as
Florida's vote totals. And you will never see Bush serving
meals to the
homeless. What
would Bush's handlers do? Have the homeless applaud him?
Bush's handlers
could have propaganda signs in the background that proclaim:
"Fighting
homelessness through tax cuts for billionaires."
We should not be surprised or even "shocked and
awed" that the Bush
administration would resort to yet another manipulation of the
media to
craft
public opinion. We all remember Bush's landing on the USS
Abraham Lincoln
with
the banner "Mission Accomplished." We were told Bush
had to fly to the
carrier
because the ship was too far off shore for a helicopter trip.
Yes, the
Lincoln
was so far off shore that if the camera angles were different,
viewers could
have seen the San Diego skyline and the top of the Coronado
Bridge.
Then there was Bush's State of the Union address in
which he cited
Iraq's desire to purchase uranium from Africa. We now know
that allegation
was
based on bogus documents laundered by the intelligence service
of the
Italian
proto-fascist prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
As political handlers like Karl Rove continue to remold
Bush like a
lump of Playdough, first from a Texas rancher, then to a Navy
fighter pilot
complete with a corresponding action figure, and now to a
globe hopping
"James
Bond," let us not forget that the war against Iraq was a
violation of
international law. Even arch-neoconservative war hawk Richard
Perle has
conceded that
point. Rove and company will be pulling more tricks out of
their bags as the
2004
presidential campaign approaches. Intelligent Americans
everywhere -- and
there are many of them -- should pause and think about what
they are hearing
and
seeing on television.
Meanwhile, anyone care for eggs and bacon with their
turkey?
* Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative
journalist and
columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. He is
the
co-author,
with John Stanton, of "America's Nightmare: The
Presidency of George Bush
II."
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
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