Cross-posted here at DailyKos.
While I didn’t watch the Rose Garden conference, I’m seeing a lot of diaries in a lot of places and I’m also reading about it online at some news sources.
Before I could even finish this article, I already was contemplating what I would say to Mr. President, if only I was in the Rose Garden during this Press Conference.
From Yahoo story, Bush Calls Human Rights Report ‘Absurd’:
President Bush on Tuesday dismissed a human rights report as “absurd” for its harsh criticism of U.S. treatment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying the allegations were made by prisoners “who hate America.”
Mr. President, these are allegations made by prisoners “who hate America” you say? Which prisoners? Are they the same prisoners that the Red Cross and Newsweek cited as having lodged complaints about Koran abuse, torture, and abuse?
Let me retract that question. Seems retractions are the fastest way to finding yourself not at the end of the microphone through which Scotty McClellan will admonish me.
Well…it’s not wonder they hate America, not to mention the unjust, illegal war you got us into.
“It’s an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world,” Bush said of the Amnesty International report that compared Guantanamo to a Soviet-era gulag.
Ah yes, your do-all, save-all catch phrase, Freedom. Freedom for whom? Iraqi’s who have to worry about daily bombings and assination attempts, wrongly fire by our troops, sewer, water, and electrical infrastructures that are practically non-existant?
Mr. President, do you have any comment on the situation in Sudan right now?
Will Amnesty International now be an organization that also hates Freedom and America? Shall we expect Rumsfeld or McClellan to issue a Press Statement saying that Amnesty International got their facts wrong? Will Amnesty International workers or prisoners come forward and make retracting statements?
In a Rose Garden news conference, Bush defiantly stood by his domestic policy agenda while defending his actions abroad. He repeatedly pledged to press ahead — “The president has got to push, he’s got to keep leading” — despite mounting criticism.
Yeah, it’s no wonder he has to keep pushing on. He’s now realizing what type of situation we’re really in now. Stay in Iraq, and more people die. Pull-out of Iraq right now, the terrorists win, deomcracy “fails”, and perhaps civil war breaks out. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
“I think the Iraqi people dealt the insurgents a serious blow when we had the elections,” Bush said. “In other words, what the insurgents fear is democracy because democracy is the opposition of their vision.”
A serious blow? Are you serious? I’m sorry, but unlike you, I watch the tv and read the news – a variety of sources, not your Faux News and I have yet to see one shred of Democracy! I see fighting, I see death, I see this war costing anywhere from between $600 Billion and $1 Trillion dollars by 2010. And that’s only five years away. That’s more than our federal deficit for christ’s sake!
On another foreign policy issue, Bush shot back at critics who suggest his diplomatic approach to North Korea is allowing the communist regime to expand its nuclear program. “If diplomacy is the wrong approach, I guess that means military. That’s how I view it as either diplomacy or military. I am for the diplomacy approach,” he said. “And for those who say we ought to be using our military to stop a problem, I would say that while all options are on the table, we’ve still got a ways to go to solve this diplomatically.”
You’re for diplomatic means? Like what, isolation? Fear? Condescending behavior, like Cheney’s comment about Kim Jong?
Mr. President, you sir, are stirring a hornet’s nest. You’ve got Iraq, which is a disaster, we’ll throw in Afghanistan at no extra charge, N. Korea, and also Iran to deal with. Zarqarwi went to Iran you say? Sooooo….that means we go to Iran too, right? Gotta chase those terrorists all over the world, right? That is what you said, correct?
And what about that military option? Would you care to elaborate on your plan from entry to exit? Troops lev…oh, I’m sorry Mr. President, I know that’s a sore point with you. There are no troops to have a military option in North Korea with because everyone realizes the mess your lies have gotten us into and now nobody wants to sign up for service. Well, I don’t blame them.
“Here, you’re innocent until proven guilty and it appeared to us, at least people in my administration, that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial,” Bush said. “We’re watching the ongoing case.”
Mr. President, you have absolutely NO room to talk about how “here, you’re innocent until proven guilty.” There are suspected terrorists, both foreign and domestic, who have been in detention, god only knows where, since shortly after 9/11. They haven’t seen or talked to their family or friends, they barely have access to lawyers, which aren’t independent, and they’re not allowed to view evidence or request testimony from the prosecution.
How exactly does that fit your “claim” that – here in America, you are “innocent until proven guilty?”
On the Amnesty International report, Bush said, “It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of the allegations by people who were held in detention, people who hate America.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah – heard that already, Mr. President.
The president opened the news conference by urging Congress to pass his stalled energy legislation, restrain the growth of government spending, approve the Central American Free Trade Agreement and overhaul Social Security with a partial privatization plan.
“Restrain the growth of government spending.” This speaks for itself, so I feel no need to comment on this one. I’ll just revert your attention back to the possible costs estimates for this war up to 2010.
Despite democratic opposition and Republican skittishness about his plans for Social Security, he said he would push forward. “It’s like water cutting through a rock. I’m going to keep working and working and working,” he said
Don’t you mean “blood from a stone” Mr. President? Or would that be “oil from the blood from a stone?”
Turning to the controversial issue of embryonic stem cell research, Bush said that the extra embryos created during fertility treatments — estimated to now number around 400,000 — should be adopted.
Why exactly? So you can further show such a poor example of initiative such as No Child Left Behind? So we can have 400,000 more children without healthcare? 400,000 more children getting educations from poorly funded schools and poorly paid teachers?
400,000 more deaths from cancer, Alzheimers, heart disease because we adopted these 400,000 children instead of opening up a new line of stem cell research which offers possibly the greatest achievments in modern medical science? And then when another country makes advancements in stem-cell research, you have the gall to admonish them too?
Sadly, you are the President of this country, not any other country. How about acting like a President and taking care of some domestic problems for a change? There are struggling Americans who need freedom and democracy to work for them right here in this country!
“There’s an alternative to the destruction of life,” he said. “But the stem cell issue is really one of federal funding, that’s the issue before us, and that is whether or not we use taxpayers’ money to destroy life. … I don’t believe we should.”
So fetuses are more important to you than the troops and innocent Iraqi’s who are dying every single day in Iraq? That’s the message you’re sending out, Mr. President.
And my final note:
Mr. President, given all your shortcomings, your rhetoric, your lies, your pandering, your proclamations that “you’re either with us or against us”, terrorists should “Bring it on!”, that “freedom is on the march”, and that “major combat operations are over”, and “mission accomplished”, your unwillingness to work in a bipartisan manner, your erosion of freedoms and rights for Americans here, and your utmost ill regard for the image of this great nation, both here and abroad, Mr. President I have come to this conclusion:
It is YOU who hates America.