An often-forgotten fact about George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech – UPDATED

By on May 4, 2012 in GOPocrisy, Lies

Remember this? Most people don’t, at least not correctly.


Most people probably remember George W. Bush swooping down out of the sky in a fighter jet and alighting onto the deck of the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier to give a rousing war speech under a gigantic “Mission Accomplished” banner.

You probably remember that the USS Lincoln was in the Persian Gulf at the time and our “Wartime President” was there to celebrate the liberation of Iraq. Right?

Wrong.

After a week of listening to endless drivel from conservative war hawks/chicken hawks like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and Mitt Romney tell us how egregious it was for President Obama to dare mention the killing of Osama bin Laden on the event’s one-year anniversary, it’s useful to remember the exact details of that day: May 1st, 2003.

The day Bush landed on the USS Lincoln, it was just 30 miles from shore near San Diego, California.

In other words, it was a completely staged theatrical display, designed to make a man who avoided military service look like the warrior he never was.

So, please, spare me the [p]outrage and faux indignation. That dog does NOT hunt.

I’m not even sure it will get up off the porch for dinner.

UPDATE: Turns out that one of the groups making the biggest stink about this is admitting that they are trying to “swift boat” the president:

Veterans for a Strong America describes itself “a grassroots action organization committed to ensuring that America remains a strong nation by advancing liberty, safeguarding freedom and opposing tyranny.” Founded in 2010, the ostensibly nonpartisan group kept a low profile until earlier this week, when it posted a splashy online ad that uses statements from President Barack Obama to suggest that the commander-in-chief boasted about his role in killing Osama bin Laden, dishonoring America’s military in the process. [...]

Karl Rove praised the ad on Twitter, calling it “powerful,” and it rapidly burned up the right-wing blogs. “The swift boating of Obama has begun,” The Atlantic announced. “One thing that’s clear from this advertisement, if more current and former SEALs decided to come out of the woodwork in opposition to Obama, it could do real damage to him.”

Joel Arends, Veterans for a Strong America’s founder, chairman, and sole staffer, tells me he’s proud of his organization’s viral video, even if it’s characterized as swift boating. “Yes, it’s the swift boating of the president, in the sense of using what’s perceived to be his greatest strength and making it his greatest weakness.”

And, with that, you have an admission from President Obama’s political opponents that his greatest strength is national security.

Game. Set. Match.

[CC image credit: Jebur | Wikimedia Commons]


  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OGH2YDGXNLWHLHIPMHP2VM64TA c

    Hi. Sorry. You’re wrong. The criticism has come from Obama using it as a campaign technique and using it in campaign ads. Of course he can and should discuss what happened on the anniversary. But NO President should take credit for the work others really performed…

    • Bpoilspill

       Yeah Bush single handedly fought both gulf wars , I forgot.

      • http://eclectablog.com Eclectablog

        Seriously. WTF?

        • CB_Demented

           What is also, frequently, forgotten is the reason the carrier was where it was is that it had just returned from a deployment to the gulf, which is why they were celebrating accomplishing their mission..and why that particular carrier was chosen. I work with a guy who was on that deployment, as a matter of fact.

          Flying on deck to a carrier trap was a bit of theater, to be sure, but then again, few politicians have the stomach to try it.

          I don’t have an issue with the President crowing about taking down Bin Laden. He deserves credit for making a ballsy call to go into Pakistan. I do mind that he turned it into a campaign speech, and I don’t think the comparisons to Bush on the carrier are very apt.

          The end of major combat operations wasn’t a victory for the country. It was a phase of the war. A war that

          The Death of Bin Laden was a victory for us all. It’s a bit more important than Bush’s photo op.

          I’m not going to make a big issue of it, because it’ isn’t one. But Obama should have known better. There are alot of people who made that happen, and a lot of people who had a stake in the death of Bin Laden through the loss of loved ones either in two wars, or 9/11. It was a bigger, national issue than anything Bush did, and turning it into a campaign issue is just wrong…by either party.

          • Bbock

            You apparently forgot the GOP conventions which used and abused the memory of 9/11 to an appalling degree for political gain. Or that Bush himself used images of 9/11 in his campaign ads. It was a reverse Swiftboat, using your own biggest failure and recasting as your biggest triumph. Bush and his administration FAILED to keep America safe on 9/11, but they used it for two terms to get everything they wanted, including a war of choice in Iraq. So until the GOP gets upset about that, they can fuck off about Obama talking about killing bin Laden.

          • CB_Demented

             No. I didn’t forget. They were wrong for doing it.

            And blaming 9/11 on Bush is just bullshit. If you feel like laying blame, you might want to take a look at how the Clinton administration systematically dismantled the CIA’s human intelligence operations.

            But even then, it’s just bullshit fingerpointing. It took multiple agencies, more than one congress, and more than one administration, for 9/11 to happen.

          • Odbeester

            okay, THAT’S absolute bullshit. The Clinton Administration increased intelligence operations regarding al-Qaeda. They had a number of successes against them, they warned the Bush regime during the transition that al-Qaeda would be a major problem and presented them with both what the Clinton admin had been doing and what they recommended the Bushies do. The Bushies chose to ignore all of this, and concentrate on missle defense instead. The 9/11 attacks succeeded thanks to Bush’s negligence.

          • CB_Demented

            You are wrong. I worked in the intelligence field when the Clinton administration came into being. They decimated CIA. Clinton hired John Deutch and he went on a witch hunt after a scandal in Guatemala, firing dozens of experienced case officers.

            The Clinton administration nearly completely castrated human intelligence operations in the CIA. It’s a well documented, well lamented fact. They didn’t like the fact that along with human intelligence operations, you deal with bad men who do bad things and occasionally bring scandal to the spotlight, and they also had a distaste for the agency as a whole. They concentrated, instead, on signals and electronic intelligence assets, which are all well and good, and look really sexy in news reports, but don’t in any way substitute for boots on the ground with well developed human assets feeding information.

            The Bush administration was caught flat footed, as would any administration have been, because of the nature of the information coming in and the number of sources from different agencies. These agencies not only didn’t share information, they held it closely. Reports about al Qaeda were sporadic, unsubstantiated, and frequently misinterpreted. What was obvious in hindsight, when the end game can be seen, isn’t in any way evident when you’re trying to put the 1000 piece puzzle together that’s missing 500 pieces.

          • TeeJae

            Except for that pesky little daily briefing memo entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US” that was willfully ignored.

          • CB_Demented

            uh huh. Kind of like the hundreds of other “so and so is determined to do this or that” reports coming from all over the place? Bin Laden was a nobody until 9/11. Abu Nidal was the bad guy prior. Bin Laden was just another one of multiple guys running around with a group that was pissed at the US. He was of importance only for his connection to embassy bombings.

          • TeeJae

            Word of advice: do some research before posting. Your ignorance is showing. The secret diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks confirm that bin Laden was in fact of grave concern not only to Bush Jr BEFORE 9/11, but also to the Clinton administration. If you truly care about not remaining ignorant on this topic, here’s an article (one of many) that should provide you with some insight:

            http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/clinton_bush_and_osama_bin_laden_the_wikileaks_cables.html

          • CB_Demented

            I don’t need to do any research. I was in the intelligence field during the Clinton administration. I personally provided data used for the daily briefing and a prepared aerial intelligence estimates used in strikes on training camps in Afghanistan and in Sudan.

            And you might want to read that article a bit more carefully, and without trying to mold it to fit into your narrative.

            It highlights quite well what I’ve already said. There was no consensus at all on how much of a threat bin Laden was. The only people really crowing about him was the State Department, and they really didn’t put him to the top of the list until the bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Prior to those bombings, they were more worried about his organizational skills and that he’d foment trouble for the US in the Muslim world.

            And just in case you aren’t aware, the State Department isn’t the intelligence community…it’s the diplomatic community, which is frequently at odds with the intelligence community who takes a far more circumspect attitude towards foreign nationals then State. The intelligence community didn’t have much respect for anyone at State until Powell took over there.

            The fact is, the intelligence community was quite fragmented during the Clinton administration. The first few years of that adminstration saw the retirement or resignation of nearly an entire generation of experienced cold war Directorate of Operations agents. Clinton didn’t care for CIA and in fact never even met privately, one on one, with his first DCI, Woolsey, during the man’s entire tenure. After he resigned, CIA was going through an internal witch hunt following the scandal in Guatemala which saw Deutch give the boot to dozens of senior career officers. This pretty much decimated the directorate that was responsible for human intelligence. So CIA wasn’t on top of any game, and even if they had been, the didn’t play very nice with NSA, who also holds everything close to the vest and doesn’t share with NRO or DIA. The ONI doesn’t share with the BfSBs, neither whom trust or share with CIA, and none of them pay much attention to State, who tends to ignore everything most of the rest of the alphabet soup of spookdom and the military told them because they consider them to be brutish louts with no diplomatic sensibilities.

            So despite the fact that they all ostensibly fell under the DCI, who was the Director of National Intelligence prior to the formation of Homeland Security, they didn’t share information much more than they had to, and when they did, they didn’t share everything. Which led to a bunch of disparate information that all of them had a piece of, but couldn’t fit together because they didn’t play nice.

            In addition, while there were nebulous warnings about a “strike on the US,” nobody had any clue what was about to happen. Everyone expected some sort of bomb, which they all felt they’d have a good chance to stop. And towards the end of Clinton’s administration, and once Bush took office and got scope locked, they were more concerned with a possible Iraqi nuclear program and Saddam’s announced intentions to supply his terrorist buddies with weapons, then they were about bin Laden or one of the 100 or so other threats on the radar at the time.

            By the time anyone but State really clued into bin Laden, Bush had only been in office a few months and the new administration was still getting it’s feet under it. They, like the Clinton administration, still thought they could bargain with the Taliban and bring bin Laden to justice…which hindsight conveniently tells us wasn’t going to happen.

          • TeeJae

            Thank you, Bbock. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

          • JB

            Except that the “Mission Accomplished” banner was made and hung by the White House staff (even though they tried to pretend that the Navy hung it).  And Rumsfeld admitted that the speech was written to mark the end of major hostilities and that he had to tone it down “and they fixed the speech but not the banner”.  Landing on the jet was theater and much like the banner, the Bush camp lied about it and originally pretended that it had to be done because of distance.

          • CB_Demented

            Yeah. So? It never was intended as a banner decrying the end of the war. It was an end to major war operations, and it coincided with the end of the carrier’s cruise.

            Those against the war have been mocking it as something it never was ever since.

          • guest

            He had to be told by the pilot to STOP TOUCHING THINGS after alarms kept going off inside the cockpit!! The pilot who flew W in told his story & it’s HILLARIOUS!!

          • CB_Demented

             He did huh? So some time within the year and three months Lt. Commander Zellem had left on the earth before he died, while he was still on active duty, he decided to publicly deride his CiC?

            This guy, who commented widely on what an honor it was to fly the CiC, a person you don’t normally even get to meet when you’re in the service, at some point in the last year he had yet to live, put his very promising career on the line and reversed himself to make fun of his ultimate boss, while he was still in the service. That’s your story?

            Yeah. Bullshit.

    • http://twitter.com/kerryreid Kerry Reid

       By your impeccable logic, then, there was no need to take out Bin Laden. He didn’t really “perform” the dastardly deeds of the hijackers on 9/11.

      • Joe Mihm

         Dumb ass! Your statement has nothing to do with reality!

        • Andydavenhall

          then you didn’t understand the statement..

        • http://www.facebook.com/karn58 Karen Roberts

          Idiot two

      • Dddvhand

        Are you insane?

        • http://www.facebook.com/karn58 Karen Roberts

          Idiot one

      • http://www.facebook.com/karn58 Karen Roberts

        True Bin Laden took the blame for masterminding 9/11. So, Obama Deserves a BIG Hand and rightly so, for the Call in acieving his death! Thanks Kerry Reid. It is hard to undermind that logic. Besides, it is not Obama blowing his horn, it is us activist. We are proud of him, and consider this, his most finest achievement!

    • Joe Mihm

       You area dumb ass. President Obama is Commander in Chief of the military. He is in charge
      the blame or/and the credit go to him. No, it wasn’t his boots on the ground but nor was it any other modern presidents .

    • http://profile.yahoo.com/7XC3VXCLDVUPLHUAXLZ5H2USWU ALEX

      He is taking credit for pursuing Bin Laden after bush had stopped.  He is taking credit for giving th go ahead on a risky mission.  He is taking credit for doing what the Republicans couldn’t do.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_E4ERLBJHRBRXEXZDKEBWZJCJOQ Debbie

        You’re right except that Bush never really started looking for Bin Laden.  The Bush’s and the Bin Laden’s were friends from way back.  

        • Wensel911

           Pretty much! Bush stated himself that he had no intentions on hunting Him down. Didn’t think that was smart? (More like, didn’t wanna capture a major character in the war for oil)

    • Nicetrini

       The president is NOT a Navy Seal dummy! FYI, Navy Seals are trained for that job. He makes the gutsy decision, gives the order and they do the job!

      • Andydavenhall

        Romney is not running for “Navy Seal”..

      • Logansama

        I think he took responsibility. Within hours of the mission, he got up and took responsibility…that was before he…or anyone else knew what the fallout would be. It might have been something that his detractors were able to jump on, yet if the entire situation went to hell, he took responsibility. At the end of the day, the buck stopped with the President and he was willing to take responsibility for it, even if it turned into a major clusterfu*k. That’ took guts and not many people managed to pick that up. 

    • Larry

      He is the commander-in-chief. The credit or blame goes to him. Why don’t people pay attention? If you check his press conferences or speeches, he  has given credit to everyone from the Seals team to the commanders who were put the raid together. Let me say this. If he had failed it would have been the end of his Presidency. That’s a fact.
      Conservatives would be throwing it up in his face every second. He would be more villified than he is now. And finally, if Bush was in office going into an electionyear, be real. The Right Wing would have this accomplishment in political ads constantly.

      • Dano_2689

        You are so right on all of your points. I find it pathetic that Obama, and only Obama,  is blamed for each and every one of the country’s ills but right wingers refuse to give even a little credit for this.

    • Yoo4ic

      Who gave the order? Thought so!!

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_E4ERLBJHRBRXEXZDKEBWZJCJOQ Debbie

      Really?  And why shouldn’t he?  It was something that was accomplished in his presidency.  If Bush had known where Osama was (and I believe he did seeing as the Bush’s and the Bin Laden’s were such good friends) he would not have gone after him. Bush didn’t even try, instead he went after Sadam, with totally made up charges.

    • Fagar

      The mission to bring Bin Laden to justice would not have happened were it not for President Obama.  President Bush had a policy of NOT pursuing terrorists into Pakistan as a result of an agreement with Pakistani officials to respect their border with Afghanistan.  That is why Bin Laden remained free for so long.  President Obama reversed this policy.  And, once there was a probable fix on Bin Laden, President Obama gave the order to proceed with the mission.  The President deserves credit for being strong enough to take these actions.  The President has never said that he was among the Navy Seals who raided Bin Laden’s camp.  The President is not trying to take credit for work that others really performed.  

    • http://profile.yahoo.com/AWCBXOFKH2ZFO3QV53373MFTYQ Tom Parker

       It’s not like Reagan got the credit for getting the 50 hostages home or Lincoln got the credit for resolving the Civil War or etc etc. Of course the president gets the credit for what his subordinates do under his command. Don’t be silly.

      • http://www.facebook.com/zor323 John Basden

        Let’s remember Jimmy Carter got them released.  Ronald Reagan had it delayed until the day he was in office.

    • TeeJae

      He is (rightly) taking credit for making the DECISION (in the face of vehement opposition from his own advisers). As for the OPERATION, he has (rightly… and openly… and frequently) given credit to those who carried out the mission.

  • http://twitter.com/HoraceBoothroyd Horace Boothroyd III

    So Dubya made several thousand troops returning from theater delay their R&R.

  • bedrockq

    We can only hope to see more of this “swift boating”.  All it does is remind people of Obama’s accomplishments.  So spend more of your Koch donated money on this please.

  • http://twitter.com/DuncanMitchel1 Duncan Mitchel

     ”And, with that, you have an admission from President Obama’s political
    opponents that his greatest strength is national security.”

    Well, no, not really.  What Arends said was that his group is focusing on what is *perceived* to be Obama’s greatest strength — to which I’d add that this perception seems to be especially concentrated among Obama loyalists, followed by former Bush officials who see him carrying on Bush’s legacy.  Yet this whole post is about the ways that perception doesn’t equal reality.  With his fondness for calling himself The Commander in Chief and his gross bellicosity, Obama is a lot more like Bush than the fans of either would like to think.  Remember his ‘jokingly’ threatening the Jonas Brothers with predator drones if they looked cross-eyed at his daughters?  And it’s certainly debatable whether Obama has contributed anything to national security, much like Bush.

    • http://eclectablog.com Eclectablog

      “fondness for calling himself The Commander in Chief…”

      That’s a good one. Thanks for giving me a giggle on a Friday afternoon. By the way: THIS.

    • http://profile.yahoo.com/7XC3VXCLDVUPLHUAXLZ5H2USWU ALEX

      What???
      Seriously????
      Debatable????
      Hilarious..

    • Andydavenhall

      Wait! I’m confused, Obama is “the decider” no wait, Bush is.. Bush is the goat.. DOH!! wait BUSH is “the decider”!! yep, Bush is the decider. :(    

    • Dddvhand

      He IS the Commander in Chief.

    • Fagar

      President Obama has contributed a great deal to our national security just by being a person who other world leaders respect.  President Obama is not bellicose–he does not flaunt American power to instill fear.  Clearly, diplomacy is The President’s first choice of action.  That is why President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.  In a crises, other leaders now seem more willing to listen to our point of view (as is happening in China right now).  The President will protect us from our willful enemies–as is his job.  He will go after a pirate or a terrorist with a vengeance.  We have had two successful missions to take out pirates. Drone attacks have devastated the leadership of Al Queda. I would think that some decisions about national security are fairly secretive–thus, we may not know ALL that is being done to keep us safe.  The President and his Administration have done a good job on national security so far–they deserve our appreciation.  (And, a joke is a joke–not a threat.)

      • CB_Demented

        The irony of Obama’s foreign policy is that he’s taken a big page out of the Reagan playbook. Tell them what they want to hear, and then do what you want to do. Reagan did it all the time on both the international stage, and within his own party with the religious right.

        Obama has done the apology tour while at the same time ramping up drone warfare in a secret campaign to bomb whomever he feels like, whenever he feels like, without taking credit or even responsibility. He’s done so in Yemen and Pakistan on more than one occasion.

        • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_RLGHF7KVC6RXNFZ3AHJHIAXGOY Kenny-Lives

          Obama nothing like Reagan !   Reagan’s dirty wars on Central America on his attempt to install right wing governments in every country there killed over 200,000 people for NO good reason. He failed, as you and the whole world can see. The arms then ended up in the hands of drug cartels and gangs, such as MS-13, the most violent gang on earth !   Reagan then had the Mujahadeen trained in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Yes, that was Bin Laden and the future Taliban. They now use that expertise against us. Former Pakistani President Musharraf, then a general, helped the CIA train the Mujahadeen. He said that was the biggest mistake of his life and America will soon see it as the same. No, Reagan was real bad for this country and this world.

          • CB_Demented

            Really?

            Reagan’s “dirty little wars” as you call them were an extension of the same foreign policy began by Eisenhower and continued through ever administration that followed until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

            And you can argue what good came out of it all day and all night, but in the end, through those wars of attrition, we outspent and out performed our enemy at the time to the point that they gave up, and eventually ceased to be.

            Your statement about the drug cartels and gangs shows just how ignorant and naive you are regarding this subject. Who exactly do you think was selling those drugs in the first place? I spent 18 months in Honduras during the fracas in Nicaragua, and I’m here to tell you that you’d be hard pressed to figure out who sold more drugs…the Sandinistas or the Contras. The people selling drugs then are the same people selling drugs now…government, former government, and rebel officials who now have gone big business since there are no longer any army’s tramping around slowing down their business.

            MS-13 is a Salvadoran gang that originated in LA and didn’t become multinational until we started deporting them when they started to get large and were arrested in California…more than a decade after they formed. They weren’t even on anyone’s radar until 2000. Reagan had zero to do with them being armed, and only a tangential relationship to how they formed.

            The training of the Mujaheddin wouldn’t have taken place at all if it weren’t for a democrat congressman from Texas who is almost completely, and solely responsible for anyone in the US government taking any interest whatsoever in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and is solely responsible for the arming and training of Afghan fighters. But that’s pretty irrelevant considering the fact that bin Laden kept his foreign fighters separate from the Afghan Mujaheddin, and the CIA had nothing to do with training his forces.

    • CB_Demented

       Um…I’m not in any stretch of the imagination an Obama loyalist. But he’s my Commander in Chief, regardless of my distaste for his presidency…and I’m not even in the service any more.

      What’s more, regardless of who helped get him there, when it came down to it, the CiC made a ballsy call. He chose to ignore international sovereignty and invade an ally to carry out a hit on someone within that Ally’s borders. That took balls…and quite a few presidents would not have done it. I firmly believe that Clinton would never have made that call. He might have lobbed a missile in, but he never would have put boots on the ground. I’m not even sure that Bush would have.

      I have no problem giving credit where credit is due here…and anyone with half a brain can see this is a case where credit is due.

  • JG

    I hate the sound of partisan bullshit but seriously,,, conservatives can come across as super fricking brainless. I have seen quite a few clips of Obama gratiously thanking all others involved with the Abadabad (sp) operation. This is including Panetta. I have also heard conservatives on Fox news saying Obama has taken all the credit for himself which I have never seen. I have some conservative ideas but the right wing political machine is crap. My business has grown in the last couple years. It has been a struggle but it’s getting better. Please don’t put another Bushite in charge. We are barely comeing back from the damage those guys did.

    • Dddvhand

      Right on, JG.  I’m in manufacturing, a multi-billion dollar capitalist company, and we can’t get it out the door fast enough!

      • dddfaber

        Great news JG and Dddvhand! We are also hiring and growing our business after a couple of lean years. I’m pleased with the turnaround and in a position to face the upcoming challenges, provided that those who so avidly want Obama removed from office don’t destroy the economic recovery just to get their way.

    • Chintok

      Totally agree with you, JG.  But did you see the report about employers stretching their workers to the max?  I understand (would recommend) caution in hiring, in case of another downturn, but is there also a political undercurrent that would want the unemployment to stay high?  I just wonder.

    • Fagar

      Right On!

  • Pedro nieto

    The “right wing political machine” in not only crap, it is also a right wing media machine designed to keep us at each others throat by telling us over and over that the media is liberal. That is a LIE. The republicans control the media and even the so called liberal pundits keep saying that the media is liberal. As long as we believe those lies we are doomed. Remember, the governments are formed to protect the working people from the excesses of the rich, very much like a labor union that is formed  to protect the employers from abusing the workers. Throughout history the rich have tried to take advantage of their workers so we have to organize to protect ourselves. Its only natural for the rich to want a smaller government, the fact is they would rather that there was NO government.

  • Chintok

    The scariest of all in all this is that a basically one-man operation such as Veterans for a strong America can have its lines immediately picked up and amplified by Fox and the likes (Rove, the Kochs, whoever!), to the point where it immediately becomes truth in the minds of millions of gullible bastards, who would rather hurt themselves politically, socially and economically than inform themselves and form their own opinions.

    • http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/ Ed Darrell

       Can someone remind us:  In what branch of the service did Karl Rove serve?  Where are the veterans in this so-called veterans organization?

      • CB_Demented

        Their leadership consists of the following:
        Director
        James H. Brock, Major USMCR (ret.)
        (registered democrat)

        Assistant Director
        Nick Sacco, USMC, 10 years as MP and Sniper.
        20 year member of KC police/swat
        (registered republican)

        Advisors
        Zach Wyatt, USAF veteran
        Stephen Gossard, USMC veteran

  • the dude

    Um, the difference is that Bush did it shortly after the event rather than one year after Obama’s event in an election year. Big difference. However, getting Bin Laden happened on his watch – he gets credit, just like any other president would.

    • http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/ Ed Darrell

      Right.  Bush did it prematurely, by about a decade.  Obama waited a year after he’d accomplished the mission Bush couldn’t.  We’re sure, now.

      There’s a lot of screwups from the Bush administration left for Obama to clean up.  Bank failures, crashing employment, the burst housing bubble, unfunded mandates for education, unpaid bills for Medicare benefits, the Medicare doughnut hole, women unfairly kept from fair pay for jobs they spent a lifetime doing . . . yeah, BIG DIFFERENCE.  Justice was kept waiting too long with Bush. 

      Do you think any president would have done what Obama did with bin Laden?  I’ll trust Eagle Scout Bob Gates, who said what Obama did was the bravest call he’s ever seen a president make.  Gates ought to know — he was Bush’s Secretary of Defense, and he opposed Obama’s call.

  • Jonasplanck

    This me caring.
    This me not caring.
    Notice the difference? Me neither.

  • http://twitter.com/MCessac Michael Cessac

    I’m curious as to why the author of this blog entry completely has the “Mission Accomplished” speech that GWB did wrong. As someone with a long military background, this speech was given to the sailors who were coming home from a very long deployment in support of operation Iraqi Freedom. The USS Lincoln deploys out of San Diego, and had come home in between it’s deployments. The mission accomplished was for the ship and it’s crew completing it’s support mission, not for the Iraq war. GWB did go on to speak about the end of combat operations which the USS Lincoln was a part of.

    Of course it’s probably just due to sheer laziness of the blogger here. Maybe they should watch it instead of making up crap. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzrJwzYBUkU

    Also since GWB did serve in the military, I’m not sure how the author comes up with “avoided military service”. Just like liberals to create fictional history as usual.

    The so called “swiftboating” of Obama is what you call bringing out the truth of a politician lying about their military record, like John Kerry did. Obama and his crew put the news out too quickly about Osama’s death, causing the loss of a lot of critical intel. This is why former Navy SEAL’s are coming out and calling Obama on his actions. The switftboat reference though was made by a left wing source, and not right wing blogs. Put the credit where it’s due will you?

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