| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| President Bush "I am So Sorry" |
| 2005-08-14 |
| If you plug your nose and wade through the Newsweak ruminations, you see a Commander-In-Chief who is a great leader. The grieving room was arranged like a doctor's office. The families and loved ones of 33 soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan were summoned to a large waiting area at Fort Bragg, N.C. For three hours, they were rotated through five private rooms, where they met with President George W. Bush, accompanied by two Secret Service men and a photographer. Because the walls were thin, the families awaiting their turn could hear the crying inside. President Bush was wearing "a huge smile," but his eyes were red and he looked drained by the time he got to the last widow, Crystal Owen, a third-grade schoolteacher who had lost her husband in Iraq. "Tell me about Mike," he said immediately. "I don't want my husband's death to be in vain," she told him. The president apologized repeatedly for her husband's death. When Owen began to cry, Bush grabbed her hands. "Don't worry, don't worry," he said, though his choking voice suggested that he had worries of his own. The president and the widow hugged. "It felt like he could have been my dad," Owen recalled to NEWSWEEK. "It was like we were old friends. It almost makes me sad. In a way, I wish he weren't the president, just so I could talk to him all the time." Bush likes to play the resolute War Leader, and he has never been known for admitting mistakes or regret. But that does not mean that he is free of doubt. For the past three years, Bush has been living in two worlds—unwavering and confident in public, but sometimes stricken in private. Bush's meetings with widows like Crystal Owen offer a rare look inside that inner, private world. Last week, at his ranch in Texas, he took his usual line on Iraq, telling reporters that the United States would not pull out its troops until Iraq was able to defend itself. While he said he "sympathized" with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, he refused to visit her peace vigil, set up in a tent in a drainage ditch outside the ranch, and sent two of his aides to talk to her instead. Privately, Bush has met with about 900 family members of some 270 soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. The conversations are closed to the press, and Bush does not like to talk about what goes on in these grieving sessions, though there have been hints. An hour after he met with the families at Fort Bragg in June, he gave a hard-line speech on national TV. When he mentioned the sacrifice of military families, his lips visibly quivered. |
| Posted by:Captain America |
| #5 Still waiting on the Left to apologize for their 'accessory to the fact' of the butchery of 1.25 million Cambodians in the third Holocaust of the 20th Century. However, considering the Left never stepped up to apologize for their support of Stalin and his multi-million human sacrifice to Marxism, I won't hold my breath. |
| Posted by: Snoth Glavise7365 2005-08-14 23:51 |
| #4 Dittos Frank and whitecollar redneck... By my lights W is the genuine article. Despite his feelings and terrible responsibilitys He makes the tough decisions for America and the world for the long run. God bless him and the families. |
| Posted by: Red Dog 2005-08-14 22:50 |
| #3 he has never been known for admitting mistakes or regret sounds like MSM projection, huh? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-08-14 22:24 |
| #2 Thank God he isn't some LBJ-like meglomaniac. He understands the consequences of his decisions and knows he will have to live with them. Just like the rest of us. |
| Posted by: whitecollar redneck 2005-08-14 21:28 |
| #1 Damn, should be filed elsewhere. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2005-08-14 18:48 |