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President George W Bush's place in history

georgeharper said:
How could the right wing not like Clinton?
He also dropped bombs and killed civilians that it seems right wingers have no problem with.

I am, in many ways, "right wing", and I certainly have problems with dropping bombs on and killing civilians. So has the vast majority of my counterparts in the US Armed Forces, which is why they take enormous pains to avoid such things. Precision weaponry has been developed over several decades to minimize both that and friendly casualties, and a lot of effort goes into both. Your statement is foolish and displays ignorance of reality.

georgeharper said:
Just look at it as colateral damage
Or use the disgusting term, friendly damage

The terms have been mis-interpreted and misused in the press, and this has spread. For military operations, there is desireable damage (intentional) and undesireable damage (unintentional) that results from causing the former. Collateral damage is the unintended variety. It may be totally irrelevant from the operational point of view, and it may be detrimental to military operations (rubble in built-up areas limits movement). Under no circumstances, though, does anybody set out to render civilians homeless, or kill or injure them.

georgeharper said:
Bush's lies have not only killed 4000 American soldiers and 78 Canadian, his lies have killed unknown amounts of Iraqis and mad the world a far more dangerage place than it was during Clinton's term

And these would be which lies exactly?

Saddam Hussein and company have killed far more Iraqis than "Bush's lies", as have various other groups of thugs in Iraq.

None of those terrorists - or the Taliban in Afghanistan - however give a rat's behind for the civilians that they wilfully and intentionally slaughter. Mr Bush has never personally blown up a packed wedding, mosque, or market place, or ordered such to happen.

If any US president "mad (sic) the world a far more dangerage (sic) place" it was Clinton. Bin Laden would not have attacked the US had he not perceived America to be weak. Clinton had under-reacted to previous lesser attacks on US personnel and interests in various countries and Bin Laden believed that he could escalate and get away with it. I do not believe that he expected the reaction that he got, and he certainly would not have got the one that he did had Clinton still been in office. I doubt that he is enjoying his current standard of living one little bit, or the knowledge that he will come to an ignominious end somewhere, sometime. His glory days are long over.

Had Clinton or somebody like him still been in the White House, however, al Quaida would still be blowing things and people up in the US and elsewhere.

You need to get out more, or at least look at a wider variety of sources (preferably credible ones) than you do now, remove the blinders, and get past the biased and wildly inaccurate popular myths going around.
 
mountainliving said:
Yeah right just a regular economist.
Of course he has no business talking about foriegn policy because foriegn policy has nothing to with economics.


Reality check:
In the interview, he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.

"I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan said in an interview Saturday, "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential."

He said that in his discussions with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, "I have never heard them basically say, 'We've got to protect the oil supplies of the world,' but that would have been my motive." Greenspan said that he made his economic argument to White House officials and that one lower-level official, whom he declined to identify, told him, "Well, unfortunately, we can't talk about oil." Asked if he had made his point to Cheney specifically, Greenspan said yes, then added, "I talked to everybody about that."
(Emphasis mine)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/16/AR2007091601287_pf.html

I am sure that Goerge Bush is dreaming for Iraq to become a country like Norway.
Oil prices will be very cheap then!!!
Huh?
 
Aden_Gatling said:

My point is that oil prices are likely alot cheaper because Iraq is ruined. Lets face it, the country is ruined. Why? Because some lunatic scared a bunch of rich people! Greenspan thinks it is unfortunate that we cannot admit this. Well, I dont.

Honestly, I dont think my national security interests have any correlation with the price of oil. Oil should hire and pay for their own private army and quit screwing around with the governments.
 
Iraq was in a bad way well before the US invasion. Most of it, today, is peaceful and free of the terror of Saddam Hussein.

Kuwait is far less likely to be re-invaded, and a brutal war with Iraq is far less likely to be re-fought, as well. A million people died in that last one by the way, and Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons (one of the so-called "weapons of mass destruction", a Soviet term, that Mr Bush supposedly "lied" about) against both Iranians and his own people is well documented. The number killed during the US invasion and subsequent factional infighting has yet to come anywhere close to that and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed at his whim.

And as bad as he was, his sons and heirs would have been far worse had they lived and taken over.

While the terror of Saddam Hussein & Sons has given way to the terror of factional fighting in a small but violent portion of the country, there is hope for a better future whereas there previously was none.

Oil will be cheaper when Iraq has calmed down.

Your security and standard of living is far more closely tied to the price and availability of oil than you choose to realize.
 
mountainliving said:
My point is that oil prices are likely alot cheaper because Iraq is ruined. Lets face it, the country is ruined. Why? Because some lunatic scared a bunch of rich people!
Oil is cheaper because Iraq is ruined?  Are you trying to say that Iraq was 'ruined' in the process of securing it's oil supply (which would at least be a coherent opinion)?

Honestly, I dont think my national security interests have any correlation with the price of oil.
Evidently, what you think isn't what reality is.

Oil should hire and pay for their own private army and quit screwing around with the governments.
So Iraq should have been invaded by the corporations?

Funnily enough, they kind of do pay for it all, anyway:
just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people!
http://seekingalpha.com/article/63131-exxon-s-2007-tax-bill-30-billion?source=side_bar_editors_picks
 
Loachman said:
Iraq was in a bad way well before the US invasion. Most of it, today, is peaceful and free of the terror of Saddam Hussein.

Brutal dictorship or sectarian violence? I vote for brutal dictorship after seeing endless media images of things that used to exist but no longer exist. I could provide links to examples for the next week.

Loachman said:
Oil will be cheaper when Iraq has calmed down.

Oil is cheaper as long as arabs continue to worry about killing themselves.


Loachman said:
Your security and standard of living is far more closely tied to the price and availability of oil than you choose to realize.

The Americans have nobody to blame but themselves. It's a sad state of affaires when your oil companies are leading/buying the way for innovations in energy alternatives.

I dont think oil is any more special than coal or nuclear, but apparently people who buy cars think otherwise.
 
mountainliving said:
Brutal dictorship or sectarian violence? I vote for brutal dictorship after seeing endless media images of things that used to exist but no longer exist. I could provide links to examples for the next week.
Oil is cheaper as long as arabs continue to worry about killing themselves.
The Americans have nobody to blame but themselves. It's a sad state of affaires when your oil companies are leading/buying the way for innovations in energy alternatives.
I dont think oil is any more special than coal or nuclear, but apparently people who buy cars think otherwise.

Where to start?
1. "Brutal dictatorship or sectarian violence?"  What would you prefer in Canada?
2. " ...when your oil companies ....  innovations in energy alternatives."  What?  Why shouldn't they be? Who should be if not them?
3. Oil/coal/nuclear: You must mean as a fuel, since you can't make IV bags, clothing, plastic medical devices etc. out of coal or U-238.  Even if my car ran on coal or a "Mr Fusion II", it would still need lube oil.
 
mountainliving - If you just came to this site to chant your mantra, move along. If you want to engage board members in debate, be prepared to substantiate your claims.

The topic of this thread is Bush's place in history. If you want to debate anything else, start a new thread. Before you do that, re-read the conduct guidelines. If the smug, one-line, off hand comments continue, or you post information as factual without substantiation, you will be introduced to our warning system. The other people posting in this topic are taking the time into putting some thought into explaining their perspectives and/or citing references when posting "facts". Please have the same consideration.

Army.ca Staff
 
mountainliving said:
I dont think oil is any more special than coal or nuclear, but apparently people who buy cars think otherwise.

Do you like to eat? Listen to music? Watch movies at home or in theatre? Use a computer? Talk to friends on a telephone? Wear snazzy clothes, and warm ones in the winter? Do you like travelling further than barefoot walking distance from your home by any means, including public transportation? Do you enjoy any sports other than barefoot running? Do you prefer to drink anything other than rainwater or water from the pristinely clear stream running by your house? Would you rather live in that house/apartment than a crude cabin built from logs hand-cut from your personal forest? Do you ever use electricity? Do you ever use medications or visit a doctor, hospital, or dentist? Do you use condoms (I hope so, for the sake of humanity)?

As oil becomes scarce and prices rise as a result, you'll find yourself paying more and more for everything that you take for granted and can't live without. Some things you won't be able to do or get at any price. You'll quite likely lose your job, presuming that you even have one.

Most plastics are made from oil. Consider everything that you use that contains plastic, and imagine doing without it. Everything that you have got to the shop wherein you bought it via oil-fuelled transportation.

Our society, without adequate and economical oil supplies, would rapidly resemble those in desperately poor equatorial regions, the ones with fly-covered bloated-bellied starving children that you see in television charity ads - except much more miserable in the middle of a Canadian winter.

And idiots like you would have the hardest time comprehending why, and would whine the loudest.

Fortunately, you'd also be the least likely to survive.
 
mountainliving said:
Oil is cheaper as long as arabs continue to worry about killing themselves.

I really have to question some peoples brain capacity and train of thought.

Ya, another empty profile.

This quote is from one of the most stupidest  I have seen in a while, and really tells me that the o2 thief who conjoured it up does not have a clue about reality, and is just trolling, and seeking an audience.

At $95USD a bbl, petrol is about $1.30 a litre here, and I don't think thats cheap. You obviously don't drive.

The quality of your posts belongs in the toilet.

Maybe its time to move along.
 
mountainliving said:
My point is that oil prices are likely alot cheaper because Iraq is ruined. Lets face it, the country is ruined. Why? Because some lunatic scared a bunch of rich people! Greenspan thinks it is unfortunate that we cannot admit this. Well, I dont.

Honestly, I dont think my national security interests have any correlation with the price of oil. Oil should hire and pay for their own private army and quit screwing around with the governments.

Aside from listening to the selected media sources you want to hear, and read obvious tainted rags, and  anti establishment/anti goverment sources you seem to enjoy, a question. ever been to Iraq?

I don't think its ruined, and its bettter off than it was. More good goes on there than bad, but I guess my 210 days spent there means nothing considering you are the SME on the topic.

Your posts are an embarrassment to the human race.
 
Sorry for hijacking or/and trolling. I agree with the second poster, its too early to tell. 
 
Now this comes from a very unexpected source:

http://video1.washingtontimes.com/fishwrap/2008/02/bob_geldof_in_rwanda.html

Bob Geldof in Rwanda gives Bush his props

KIGALI, Rwanda — Bob Geldof has parachuted into the White House travel pool here in Rwanda, and will join us on the flight from Air Force One to Ghana tonight.

He's going to interview President Bush for Time magazine and several European outlets, such as Liberacion, about aid to Africa for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and business development.

Mr. Geldof is an Irish rock and roll singer and longtime social activist who has helped, along with U2 rocker Bono, raise awareness about need in Africa. His most well known achievement is organizing the Live Aid concert in 1985, which raised money for debt relief for poor African countries.

But Mr. Geldof has remained closely engaged with African affairs since then, and he spoke off the cuff to reporters today who were waiting for a press conference with Mr. Bush and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Mr. Geldof praised Mr. Bush for his work in delivering billions to fight disease and poverty in Africa, and blasted the U.S. press for ignoring the achievement.

Mr. Bush, said Mr. Geldof, "has done more than any other president so far."

"This is the triumph of American policy really," he said. "It was probably unexpected of the man. It was expected of the nation, but not of the man, but both rose to the occasion."

"What's in it for [Mr. Bush]? Absolutely nothing," Mr. Geldof said.

Mr. Geldof said that the president has failed "to articulate this to Americans" but said he is also "pissed off" at the press for their failure to report on this good news story.

"You guys didn't pay attention," Geldof said to a group of reporters from all the major newspapers.

Bush administration officials, incidentally, have also been quite displeased with some of the press coverage on this trip that they have viewed as overly negative and ignoring their achievements.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times
 
OldSolduer said:
WOW....from Geldof?
Are you sure this isn't a stitch up from somewhere?

No, like I said, a very unexpected source.

Now, some more rethinking on the George W Bush presidency:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120338469685475857.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Press Corps Quagmire
By WILLIAM MCGURN
February 19, 2008; Page A19

When a man hangs up his byline to write for a president, he gets more than a new job. He gets to see how the press and pundit corps look from the other side of the notepad.

And over three years in the West Wing, you see a few things. You see who's a straight shooter, and who's full of snark. You see who's smart, and whose outrageous behavior would have made its way to Drudge had it involved White House staffers instead of White House correspondents. Most of all, you see how conventional wisdom can keep otherwise talented reporters and commentators on the same stale storyline long after the facts on the ground have changed.

Let me put this in context with three contentious issues -- one economic, one cultural, and one on foreign policy. In each case, President Bush took a clear stand. In each case, he was accused of stupidity or stubbornness and sometimes both. In each case, the facts on the ground increasingly bear the president out, sometimes dramatically. Yet the beat goes on -- with no sense of the great irony that it may be our writers and pundits who are stubbornly clinging to old assumptions.

Start with taxes. In the first three years of his administration, the president signed into law a series of tax cuts. They helped families by lowering rates, doubling the child credit, and reducing the marriage penalty. They helped small businesses, by increasing the incentives for investment and lowering the rate at which most small businesses pay taxes. And they put the death tax on the road to extinction.

Critics attacked on all fronts. The tax cuts were unfair because they only helped the rich. They would blow out the deficit, and do nothing for the economy. And when the economy began to improve, the focus shifted to a "jobless recovery."

We now know that "jobless recovery" in fact produced the longest period of consecutive job growth in our history. We now know that the tax cuts that were supposed to blow a hole in the federal budget deficit actually contributed to economic growth that has in turn yielded record tax revenues. As for unfairness, we also know that if the Democrats have their way and allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, a family of four with $60,000 in earnings in 2007 would see their taxes go up by about $1,800. So who's being stubborn?

Or take stem cells. Shortly after taking office, the president had to make a tough decision about federal funding for embryonic stem cell research that holds out hope for life-saving treatments. The problem was that getting the stem cells requires destroying embryos. In July 2001, Mr. Bush announced a reasonable compromise. The solution was that the federal government would support embryonic stem cell research, but would not support the creation of life just to destroy it.

For more than six years, the critics have reacted by suggesting America was regressing into a new Dark Ages. "An act of self-serving political Houdinism" said one columnist. A later editorial after a presidential veto ran under the headline "The President's Stem Cell Theology." The science reporter for ABC News put it this way: "We talk to a lot of scientists who believe nothing will change until the next inauguration in 2009."

Well, we didn't have to wait until 2009 for something to change. Last November, scientists discovered a way to reprogram adult skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells. In other words, we now have the potential to cultivate adult cells with the same pluripotent qualities that make embryonic cells so valuable -- and without having to destroy human life. That sure sounds like a welcome development. So let me ask: How many stories or editorials have you read giving the president his due?

Finally there is Iraq. By the end of 2006, sectarian violence was tearing Iraq apart, the terrorists were getting away with spectacular acts of murder, and our strategy plainly was not working. For a man said to resist unpleasant truths, the president acted boldly. He replaced his defense secretary, replaced his commanders on the ground, and completely overhauled his strategy. Granted, it would have been better had it come earlier. But it was a tough thing to do, he did it -- and he did it knowing full well that the critics would jump all over him.

The president announced the surge in a nationally televised address in January 2007. A conservative columnist accused the president of offering nothing but "salesmanship and spin." A cable TV host went on a rant declaring "the plan fails militarily, the plan fails symbolically, the plan fails politically." Columnists and commentators either hedged their bets or predicted disaster ahead, with allusions to Vietnam sprinkled in for good measure.

Yet the surge went ahead. In Anbar Province, Marines were sent in to take advantage of a popular Sunni revolt against al Qaeda -- and by April the capital city of Ramadi was being taken back from the terrorists. By September, U.S. and Iraqi forces were clearing out Baquba, a one-time al Qaeda town in Diyala Province. And though Gen. David Petraeus says that the gains can still be reversed, sectarian killings are down, civilian deaths are down, and the people of Baghdad are getting a taste of normal life. Surely the president deserves a little credit here.

Of course, if you are one of those experts who reassured us that a "well managed defeat" in Iraq was the way for America to go, you don't like hearing the president use plain words like "win" and "victory." Then again, you're not the audience George W. Bush worries about. During one of my first meetings in the Oval Office, the president told me and my fellow speechwriters that we must always be mindful of how his words would sound to the enemy -- and how they would sound to the young Marine risking his life against that enemy in some dusty town in Afghanistan or Iraq.

President Bush hasn't always been right. But he's been right on the things that matter most, and he's been willing to take the heat. I, for one, admire him for it.

Mr. McGurn, an executive at News Corporation, served as chief speechwriter for President Bush from January 2005 until February 2008.
 
More about what the future might hold (and look at the source!):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/06/22/do2201.xml

History will say that we misunderestimated George W Bush
By Andrew Roberts
Last Updated: 11:01pm BST 21/06/2008

As he leaves the White House at the end of his second term, the President has a poll rating of only 23 per cent, and is widely disliked and even despised. His foreign policy has been judged a failure, especially in view of the long, painful, costly war that he declared, which is still not over.
 
History may place President Bush in a far better light than he currently enjoys

He doesn't get on with his own party's presidential candidate, who is clearly distancing himself, and had lost many of his closest friends and staff to scandals and forced resignations. The New Republic, a hugely influential political magazine, writes that his historical reputation will be as bad as that of President Harding, the disastrous president of the Great Depression.

I am writing, of course, about Harry S Truman, generally regarded today as one of the greatest of all the 43 presidents, and the man who set the United States on the course that ended decades later in the defeat of Communism.

If the West wins the modern counterpart of that struggle, the War Against Terror, historians will look back in amazement at the present unpopularity of George W Bush, and marvel at it quite as much as we now marvel at the 67 per cent disapproval rates for Truman throughout 1952.

Presidents are seldom remembered for more than one or two things; the rest slip away into a haze of historical amnesia. With Kennedy it was the Bay of Pigs and his own assassination, with Johnson the Great Society and Vietnam, with Nixon it was opening up China and the Watergate scandal, and so on.

George W Bush will be remembered for his responses to 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq, but since neither of those conflicts has yet ended in victory or defeat, it is far too early categorically to assume - as left-wingers, anti-war campaigners and almost all media commentators already do - that his historical reputation will be permanently down in the doldrums next to poor old Warren Harding's.

I suspect that historians of the future will instead see Bush's decision to insist upon a "surge" of reinforcements being sent into Iraq, combined with a complete change of anti-insurgency tactics as configured by General Petraeus, as the moment when the conflict was turned around there, in the West's favour.

No one - least of all Bush himself - denies that mistakes were made in the early days after the (unexpectedly early) fall of Baghdad, and historians will quite rightly examine them. But once the decades have put the stirring events of those years into their proper historical context, four great facts will emerge that will place Bush in a far better light than he currently enjoys.

The overthrow and execution of a foul tyrant, Saddam Hussein; the liberation of the Afghan people from the Taliban; the smashing of the terrorist networks of al-Qa'eda in that country and elsewhere and, finally, the protection of the American people from any further atrocities on US soil since 9/11, is a legacy of which to be proud.

While of course every individual death is a tragedy to the bereaved families, these great achievements have been won at a cost in human life a fraction the size of any past world-historical struggle of this magnitude.

The number of American troops killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan is equivalent to the losses they endured - for a nation only a little over half the size in the mid-Forties - capturing a single island from the Japanese in the Pacific War.

British losses of 103 killed over seven years in Afghanistan bears comparison to a quiet weekend on the Western Front in the Great War, or the numbers the Army loses in traffic accidents in peacetime. History can lend a wider overall perspective to what are nonetheless, of course, immeasurably sad events.

History will also shine an unforgiving light on those ludicrous conspiracy theories that claim that the Iraq War was fought for any other reason than to implement the 14 UN resolutions that Saddam that had been flouting for 13 years.

The CIA and MI6 believed, like almost every other intelligence agency in the world, that Saddam had WMD, and the "Harmony" documents seized and translated since the fall of his regime make it abundantly clear that he was also supporting almost every anti-Western terrorist organisation imaginable.

Historians will appreciate how any War Against Terror that allowed Saddam to remain in place would have been an absurd travesty.

When the rise of al-Qa'eda is considered by historians like Philip Bobbitt and William Shawcross, it will be President Clinton's repeated refusal to act effectively in the 1990s, rather than President Bush's tough response after 9/11, that will be held up as culpable.

Judging by the rise in the value of the Iraqi dinar, the huge drop in the number of Iraqi deaths in the insurgency, the number of provinces now cleansed of al-Qa'eda, and the level of arms confiscations by the Iraqi Army in Sadr City, the new American "clear and hold" tactics have succeeded far better than the cynics ever thought possible even 12 months ago.

Give Iraq five, ten or twenty years, and Bush's decision to undertake the surge - courageously taken in the face of all bien pensant and "expert" opinion on both sides of the Atlantic - will rank alongside some of Harry Truman's great decisions of 1945-53.

If that happens, the time will come when George W Bush will be able to say what Lord Salisbury called the four cruellest yet sweetest words in the English language: "I told you so."
 

 
The private George W Bush

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/22/bush-cheney-comforted-troops-privately/

EXCLUSIVE: Bush, Cheney comforted troops privately
Joseph Curl (Contact) and John Solomon (Contact)

EXCLUSIVE:

For much of the past seven years, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have waged a clandestine operation inside the White House. It has involved thousands of military personnel, private presidential letters and meetings that were kept off their public calendars or sometimes left the news media in the dark.

Their mission: to comfort the families of soldiers who died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to lift the spirits of those wounded in the service of their country.

On Monday, the president is set to make a more common public trip - with reporters in tow - to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, home to many of the wounded and a symbol of controversy earlier in his presidency over the quality of care the veterans were receiving.

But the size and scope of Mr. Bush's and Mr. Cheney's private endeavors to meet with wounded soliders and families of the fallen far exceed anything that has been witnessed publicly, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials familiar with the effort.

"People say, 'Why would you do that?'" the president said in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Times on Friday. "And the answer is: This is my duty. The president is commander in chief, but the president is often comforter in chief, as well. It is my duty to be - to try to comfort as best as I humanly can a loved one who is in anguish."

Mr. Bush, for instance, has sent personal letters to the families of every one of the more than 4,000 troops who have died in the two wars, an enormous personal effort that consumed hours of his time and escaped public notice. The task, along with meeting family members of troops killed in action, has been so wrenching - balancing the anger, grief and pride of families coping with the loss symbolized by a flag-draped coffin - that the president often leaned on his wife, Laura, for emotional support.

"I lean on the Almighty and Laura," Mr. Bush said in the interview. "She has been very reassuring, very calming."

Mr. Bush also has met privately with more than 500 families of troops killed in action and with more than 950 wounded veterans, according to White House spokesman Carlton Carroll. Many of those meetings were outside the presence of the news media at the White House or at private sessions during official travel stops, officials said.

The first lady said those private visits, many of which she also attended, took a heavy emotional toll, not just on the president, but on her as well.

"It is just so unbelievably emotional to be with the families, for everybody involved. I mean for us and for them and for everyone," she said in a telephone interview with The Times on Saturday. "I'm very aware of how emotional it is and how draining it is for the president and for me, too. Both of us. But I think we do support each other, not by saying anything so much, but just by the comfort of each other's presence, both when we are with the families and then afterward when we are alone."

Mr. Cheney similarly has hosted numerous events, even sneaked away from the White House or his Naval Observatory home to meet troops at hospitals or elsewhere without a hint to the news media.

For instance, Mr. Cheney flew to North Carolina late last month and met with 500 special-operations soldiers for three hours on a Saturday night at a golf resort. The event was so secretive that the local newspaper didn't even learn about it until three days after it happened.

Mr. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, also have hosted more than a half-dozen barbecues at their Naval Observatory home for wounded troops recovering at Bethesda Naval Hospital and Walter Reed and their spouses and children.

The vice president said Mr. Bush "feels a very special obligation to those who he has to send in harm's way on behalf of the nation, and a very special obligation to their families, especially the families of those who don't come home again."

"He, in his travels, spends time with the families of the fallen. If he goes down to Fort Bragg, he'll often times pull together the families of guys who were stationed at Bragg and killed in action, and spend time with the families," Mr. Cheney told The Times in an interview last week.

Mr. Bush did just that when he visited Fort Bragg, N.C., in 2002, rallying 2,000 special-operation soldiers stationed at the base, which would send thousands of men to the two wars, hundreds of whom would never return. "I want their families to know that we pray with them, that we honor them, and they died in a just cause, for defending freedom, and they will not have died in vain," he told the troops, his voice choking with emotion and his eyes welling up with tears.

That same month, in St. Petersburg, Fla., the president broke down in tears as he addressed the parents and family of one of the first soldiers to die in Afghanistan. "I know your heart aches, and we ache for you. But your son and your brother died for a noble and just cause," he said as a tear rolled down his right cheek.

He stopped his speech, overcome by emotion as the crowd stood and cheered. His chin still quivering, he smeared away tears, smiled and shrugged his shoulders. Those were public events, but mirrored the scores of private meetings where emotions also ran deep.

"I do get a little emotional because it's - I'm genuine when I say I'll miss being the commander in chief," the president told The Times. "I am in awe of our military. And I hold these folks in great respect. And I also sincerely appreciate the sacrifices that their families make."

Mr. Bush sees his job as providing comfort to those who have sacrificed so much. "The definition of comfort is very interesting. Comfort means hug, comfort means cry, comfort means smile, comfort means listen. Comfort also means, in many cases, assure the parent or the spouse that any decision made about troops in combat will be made with victory in mind, not made about my personal standing in the polls or partisan politics."

Asked where he gets the strength to meet with the families of soldiers whom he - as commnder in chief - sent to their deaths, he turned stern.

"You have to believe in the cause. You have to understand that - and believe we'll be successful. If I didn't believe in the cause, it would be unbelievably terrible. I believe strongly in what we're doing. I believe it's necessary for our security. And I believe history will justify the actions. ...

"The interesting thing is, most of our troops fully understand this. They know we must defeat the enemy there so we don't have to face them here. And in a place like Iraq, they fully understood that Iraq was a front for al Qaeda. And they saw their mission as one of defending America by defeating al Qaeda," he told The Times.

Meeting with the families of the fallen has allowed the president to step out of the bubble that often surrounds him, to meet real people. "I find out a lot about the individuals when the families come and see me, because one thing they want to do is, they want to share. They want to share pictures or letters or moments.

"And I ask them to describe their loved one. What should I know about this person? Or they volunteer - 'You'd like this guy.' And many of them have said - it's amazing, the comforter in chief oftentimes is the comforted person - comforted because of their strength, comforted because of their devotion, comforted because of their love for their family member. And a lot of them said, Mr. President, please know that my child wanted to do this."

Mrs. Bush said she, too, is moved by their private meetings with relatives of the fallen.

"Visiting with the families of the fallen is one of the most touching, moving parts of this job that George has. I remember best the most recent, which was on the Intrepid on Veterans Day, when we met with nine different families. I remember them all very well, but one story that stands out in my mind was this sister who had written a biography of her brother that she lost.

"So she asked if she could read it to us. ... It represents every single family that wanted us to know about their loved ones, and what they were like, what their sense of humor was like, what they liked to do, and what they were good at."

The first lady said that many of the meetings have been kept private because "these are such personal times when people grieve. And we grieve with them. And these are not times when you would want a camera in the room or other people around. They are very emotional, personal times.

"And for all of these families to be in a room with the commander in chief who made the decision to send their loved one in harm's way is, you know, a wrenching time for us and for them. For all of us, the consequences of the choices that a commander in chief makes are clear. It's all about them, and their grief."

Some private meetings with soldiers have been publicized at the request of the soldiers themselves. When Mr. Bush met with Spc. Max Ramsey, who lost his left leg in 2006 while serving in Iraq, and Sgt. Neil Duncan, a double-amputee injured in Afghanistan in 2005, it was Sgt. Duncan who asked for news coverage.

"I wasn't sure my buddies would believe me," Sgt. Duncan said, joking with the president. When Mr. Bush had visited him at Walter Reed, the sergeant had vowed to run again, and did so on the White House South Lawn's jogging track in July 2007.

Although it was a Wednesday, Mr. Bush - who had scheduled a brief run - pulled the two soldiers through the trees to the White House pool after their jog.

"The group of us just sat there for like two hours maybe and chatted. On a whim, he just took two hours out of his schedule. ... We talked about personal things, how he feels about the war, what's been hard, what it's like being the president, some of the most difficult times for him. It was very, very cool - priceless."

Sgt. Duncan said he's glad he got the media to cover what otherwise would have been a private visit. "I thought it would be good for other soldiers to see that. It was a personal accomplishment - I wanted my family and my friends and people that I know and people I've never met to see it."

The vice president, who has been derided in the media as "Darth Vader," also has operated outside of the limelight to support wounded troops and their families even though he could have made political hay if he had made them public. He and his wife have hosted wounded troops and their families at his residence at the Naval Observatory, arranging for big-name country singers, such as Charlie Daniels and Sara Evans, to provide entertainment.

Pressed whether he ever considered allowing rap music at one of his barbecues for the troops, the vice president laughed.

"No rap, no. The country and western is sort of a compromise between old folks - you know, the big band sound of the '50s and the rappers that the younger generation understands," he said.

Actually, Mr. Cheney did manage to connect troops at his home with the "American Idol" television phenomenon in February, when he hosted an event for about 50 wounded troops at the Naval Observatory that showcased Melinda Doolittle, the big-voiced singer who was a finalist on the sixth season of the hit show.

On June 30, the vice president - code-named "Angler" by the Secret Service for his love for fly-fishing - staged a fly-fishing event on his lawn with a group of wounded troops being helped out by the charitable organization Project Healing Waters.

Rather than the usual rubber waders and camouflage fishing hat, the vice president sported a dark suit, a white shirt, green tie and business shoes but still managed to show off his favorite fly-fishing cast to the troops. Instead of water, he aimed for a bright green patch of grass as the smiling military men and their wives picked up tips and practiced themselves.

• Jon Ward contributed to this report.
 
The President's reading is much broader and deeper than most people's (and as an avid reader myself, I'm impressed). Unfortunately his critics are "intellectually insulated":

http://www.randomjottings.net/archives/003699.html

Richard Cohen - the intellectually insulated man

I'm a bit bugged by this piece by Richard Cohen - George W. Bush as an Avid Reader:

    ....The list Rove provides is long, but it is narrow. It lacks whole shelves of books on how and why the Iraq war was a mistake, one that metastasized into a debacle. Absent is Rajiv Chandrasekaran's 'Imperial Life in the Emerald City,' Tom Ricks's 'Fiasco,' George Packer's 'The Assassins' Gate' or, on a related topic, Jane Mayer's 'The Dark Side' about 'extraordinary rendition' and other riffs on the Constitution. Absent too is Barton Gellman's 'Angler,' about Dick Cheney, the waterboarder in chief.

    Bush read David Halberstam's 'The Coldest Winter,' which is about the Korean War, but not on the list is Halberstam's 'The Best and the Brightest,' which is about the Vietnam War. Bush read some novels, but they are mostly pre-movies, plotted not written, and lacking the beauty of worldly cynicism. I recommend Giuseppe di Lampedusa's 'The Leopard.' Delicious.

    My hat is off to Bush for the sheer volume and, often, high quality of his reading. But his books reflect a man who is seeking to learn what he already knows. The caricature of Bush as unread died today -- or was it yesterday? But the reality of the intellectually insulated man endures.

The "intellectually insulated man" here is Cohen. Things haven't turned out the way he expected, but does he re-think? Does he question his own assumptions?

If he would do a bit of reading himself, he would find out that it is normal in war for things to get tough. Americans always get tougher, and win in the end. You can't expect to win all the battles.

He would see American war leaders such as Pershing, Lincoln, or Marshall trying out various generals and different tactics, until they find what's needed--often after tens or even hundreds-of-thousands of casualties!

He might discover that Americans have liberated captive peoples from fascist and communist dictators before, and that the Iraq Campaign has been very cheap and easy on a historical scale. Korea was worse by an order of magnitude. And we've fought guerilla and terrorist enemies before, and many have been harder nuts to crack than al-Qaeda. And that, in fact, the Iraq Campaign has now moved into conditions that should be described not as "debacle," but by an old-fashioned word that leftists hate--victory.

And there have been plentiful signs that Bush was smart and intellectually curious from the beginning. I remember arguing the subject with various lefties back in 2001--and discovering that they were "intellectually insulated," and absolutely did not want to hear anything that might shake their world-view.

Posted by John Weidner at December 30, 2008 01:03 PM
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