There he goes again.

[libertango]

There's an issue in Star Trek that tends to really warp one's suspension of disbelief. It's this:

Isn't the captain so valuable that it makes no sense to send him on trivial but risky away missions? What happens if the captain gets killed?

It now looks like Mr. Bush has seen too many Star Trek episodes.

I was particularly thinking this as I read an article in the Washington Post about reactions to the secrecy of the trip. For example:

"But Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online, called the trip "a political masterstroke," saying: "This wasn't lying about an 18-minute gap on a tape or lying under oath. If they had announced the trip and there were attacks and people had died, everyone would be screaming bloody murder about how Bush put people in harm's way."

"If there had been attacks and people had died..." Hm. So, Mr. Goldberg appears to believe this alternate scenario would've been preferable:

President Dies in Secret Flight to Iraq -- Cheney Sworn In
Journalists, Advisors Also Killed - Number Not Known Due to Unprecedented Secrecy

When I mentioned this to Ulrika, she opined, "Well, it's proof Bush isn't running the Administration after all -- he really is expendable."

---

Then we have another WaPo piece written from one of the few reporters alllowed to tag along. Hair-raising paragraph:

"A senior administration official told reporters that even some members of Bush's Secret Service detail believed he was still in Crawford, Tex., getting ready to have his parents over for Thanksgiving. It was just one reflection of the extraordinary preparation -- and secrecy -- that went into this most unusual presidential trip."

In other words... As far as those members of the Secret Service are concerned, someone kidnapped the President on their watch.

Now it turns out later that a few members of the Secret Service did indeed accompany Mr. Bush on his jaunt to dump his parents, wife, and other family... So he wasn't completely unprotected, nor was the entire detail kept in the dark.

But think about how you'd feel if you were on that security detail, and the guy for whom you've pledged "to take a bullet" cut out and ran on you.

---

A while back, I had a post where I said the Administration's motto appears to be, "Fuck you." We can now add a few more to the list:

Fuck my mom and dad.

Fuck my wife.

Fuck the Secret Service.

Fuck the country if I get killed.

I've said for a while that Bush's invasion of Iraq appears to have been driven, more than anything else, by a desire to say to his dad, (picture a schoolyard sing-song voice) "Ha, ha... I did something you couldn't do." And that committing US troops to harms way for the sake of personal therapy was a really crappy way to carry out one's duties as President. Some friends told me I was wrong, that Georgie was such a loyal son, and this was just payback for his dad... as if solely trying to please his father rather than annoy him was any less a theraputic option.

But I look at what happened this Thanksgiving -- where Junior decided Poppy just wasn't trustworthy enough (you know, a former President), and leaving his mother, wife, and children wondering where Dad had gone AWOL to this time... And I find it very difficult not to believe that George was telling everyone in his family, again, "Fuck you."

That's family values for you.

But then, he's a uniter, not a divider.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I tend to the Powers Behind the Throne theory: THEY wanted to reply to the cowardice charges, so they sent him in, to as safe an Iraqi visit as they could contrive, tranked to the gills.

[ivymcallister.livejournal.com]

*grins* We'd come to a similar conclusion. We were rather enjoying picturing him in transit--all glassy eyes and dilated pupils, head lolling, trickle of drool decorating his chin, muttering incoherently and clutching a suspiciously crusty sock monkey.

~`~Ivy~,~

[scottscidmore.livejournal.com]

(First off, I didn't vote for nor do I like GW Bush)

Well,
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031128/us_nm/bush_iraq_dc_14

has things such as

George W. Bush was uneasy when an aide casually asked him, "You want to go to Baghdad?"


The Secret Service was deeply involved in the planning from the start, although it expressed some initial reservations. The White House went to extraordinary lengths to keep the trip a secret, including outright deception.

So if some of the Secret Service was not in on it, it was part of the cover for the trip. This sort of thing is done from time to time, although generally not on something as dicey as this trip. If you've got Service agents and staff thinking the president is doing thing A while he will really be doing thing B, it betters the odds that Bad Guys don't find out about B and pay attention ot A. I doubt that you'll find many if any Secret Service folk upset at being lied to, although they may be upset about the trip for the hazards standpoint. ANd the Secret Service is around to protect the President against small scale threats, such as someone with a gun or knife, the military would take care of large threats.

Remember, Clinton went to Kosovo for Thanksgiving back in 1999. Also remember that there wasn't an organized resistance, and he was able to meet with several thousand troops and even some of the local populace.

Some have been making this to be a way to upstage Hillery Clinton's trip there. It appears that the Bush trip was in planning 4 to 6 weeks in advance, don't know when Clinton announced her plans.

And as for leaving Cheney in charge, consider his health and the current stresses (if you are listing to or reading the news), then think who's next in line in the succession.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Did they notice anything different about him?

[daveon.livejournal.com]

It upstaged Hillary plus it was the first thing he's done in ages that made him actually look good.

Let's face it, the trip to Britain wasn't exactly an unalloyed success.