"White House Distributes Bush Op-Ed"

[GreenPartyVoter]

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a newspaper opinion piece signed by President Bush and offered to newspapers around the globe, a White House eager to lessen anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world is trumpeting U.S. efforts to help tsunami victims in the Indian Ocean region.

"Americans join those across the globe in mourning the tens of thousands of lives, many of them children, who were lost in the recent violent tsunamis from Thailand to the Horn of Africa," Bush writes in the op-ed distributed by the State Department starting last Saturday.

After a sluggish start in the days immediately after the earthquake and tsunami struck 12 countries on Dec. 26, Bush pushed the U.S. response into high gear.

He increased the U.S. relief aid pledge to $350 million and called that an initial commitment, sent Secretary of State Colin Powell and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to the region, visited the embassies of the hardest-hit nations and ordered American flags flown at half-staff. He also enlisted his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and his predecessor, former President Clinton, to lead a national drive for private donations from Americans for the relief effort.

http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20050112/D87I6H701.html

----------------------------------------------------------
Save our country one town, county, and state at a time!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm#why

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Bush, you won't take care of your own, how do you expect to convince

other countries that you give a damn about them?

[tngledwebb]

2. If he wasn't such a lying bastard

it would look like a good PR tactic.

[gratuitous]

3. Why an op-ed column?

As President, can't he just call a press conference? I have a standing bugaboo that objects to any elected official being given space in the newspaper for his or her own writing. I'm not sure why I feel this way, I guess it's because politicians have so many other outlets for getting their message out.

Newspapers are one of the few places where a citizen can get a letter or a short column printed for the review and edification of the entire community. We can't frank 10,000 pieces of mail to everyone in our district, or call a press conference, or get scheduled on one of the talk shows, but we can write a letter to the editor of a newspaper. Unless the op-ed pages are consumed with the writings of elected officials, that is.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Good point.

----------------------------------------------------------
Save our country one town, county, and state at a time!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm#why

[flordehinojos]

5. Bush wrote an op-ed piece? I read somewhere in a transcript of a LarryKing

Show that he didn't even call Cliton or his father to joint in the effort to collect money for the tsunami victims but had someone in the white house call for him. SO, MY QUESTION NOW IS:
who wrote the op-ed piece for bush?