"Bush Photo with Teen Shows Conviction and Compassion" Does it?

[thereismore]

Bush Photo with Teen Shows Conviction and Compassion

The Washington Dispatch
Editorial by CK Rairden
May 10, 2004

(these are excerpts. I don't have the original link anymore)

As the event
wound down, the president worked the line in full campaign mode shaking
hands and signing autographs. As the president passed the group, Mr.
Faulkner got an autograph, and the president continued on until Linda
Prince spoke up, This girl lost her mother on 9/11, Prince told the
president. Then everything changed.



"The president's entire expression transformed", Mr. Faulkner told me on
Sunday. "He turned and came back against the flow and his eyes locked
on Ashley's. His face showed a man who was no longer the president, he
was a father and a husband." President Bush made his way back to Ashley
and he embraced the 15-yeal old young woman. "She snuggled in with the
president just like she did when she was a little girl with her dad,"
Mr. Faulkner said. "I know it's hard," Mr. Faulkner heard the president
tell his daughter. "I'm okay," Ashley told the president. The embrace
continued.

Mr. Faulkner had his Kodak digital camera with him and debated on
invading this very private moment between his daughter and the leader of
the free world. "For 20-30 seconds the president belonged exclusively to
Ashley," Lynn Faulkner told me. So he decided to capture the moment
without invading Ashley and the president's privacy. He held up his
digital camera, not even aiming with his eye and with one click snapped
just one picture. It showed in detail the face of a compassionate man
who just happens to be the president comforting a young woman who lost
her mother in the 9/11 attacks on America.


Mr. Faulkner called the embrace "President Bush's precious gift to my
daughter." And with his small act of e-mailing that photo to friends and
family, the picture can now become a gift to the American people.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Looks like he's suffocating her with armpit funk

[Arugula Latte]

2. Gee, too bad Bush didn't stop her mother's murder.

Just ignored the warnings of the attacks ... Fuck him.

[FreedomAngel82]

3. I remember

reading about that last year. It was all set up and whatnot. :eyes:

[ExclamationPoint]

4. looks a bit creepy to me....

:yoiks: :hide:

[eleny]

5. Looks like she passed out from his pit

[AllegroRondo]

6. Make sure you look into the camera, George

we would hate to have to re-stage this

[Minnesota_Lib]

8. That was my reaction way back when this photo first appeared...

He looks as if he is making sure the camera is catching his "kodak" moment.

After the photo was snapped, he probably pushed the child down and stole her candy.

[booley]

7. He's compassionate..when it's expedient...

if it's a photo op, the compassion flows liek wine. But if it's embarressing or brings up a touch subject, he's about as compassionate as your typical slime mold...

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/29/1434216

"AMY GOODMAN: Our guest on the line with us in Washington is Cindy Sheehan. She is the mother of Casey, who died in Iraq last year. We're also going to go to Baghdad to talk with a mother, with an Iraqi blogger, about the situation there. Cindy I did want to ask you right before the Fort Bragg address of President Bush, he met with family members who lost loved ones in Iraq. Have you been able to meet with Bush administration officials?

CINDY SHEEHAN: Actually, I met with the President in June of 2004, a couple of months after my son was killed. We were summoned up to Fort Irwin, Washington state, to have a sit down with the president. So my entire family went. And I was on CNN last night with Larry King talking about this, and there was another mother who had met with him, and she said that she supports the war and the President, and she said he was so warm and everything and gentle and kind, and when my family and I met with him, I met a man who had no compassion in him. He had no heart. Like Karen said, he cares nothing about us. We tried to show him pictures of Casey. He wouldn't look at them. He wouldn't even acknowledge Casey's name. He called me “Mom” through the entire visit. He acted like we were at a tea party, like it was something fun, that we should just be so pleased that we got to meet with the President who killed our son.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you say to him?

CINDY SHEEHAN: The first thing, he came up to me, and he goes, “Mom, I can't imagine your loss. I can't imagine losing a loved one, you know, whether it be a mother, a father, a sister or brother.” And I stopped him, and I said, “You have two children. Try to imagine them being killed in a war. How would that make you feel?” And he got a little bit of -- just a little bit of human flicker in his eye, like he might be connected for a minute, because this is a man that's disconnected from humanity. And he had just got a little flicker in his eye, and I said, “Trust me, you don't want to go there.” And you know what he told me? He goes, “You're right, I don't.” And so I said, “Well, thank you for putting me there.”

And then he moved on to the next person, and then a little while later we were talking, and he went up to my oldest daughter, and he said, “I wish I could bring back your loved one to replace the hole in your heart.” And she goes, “Yeah, so do we.” And he gave her the dirtiest look and turned his back on her and ignored her for the rest of the meeting. And then a little later on in the meeting, I said, “Why were we invited here? We didn't vote for you in 2000, and we're certainly not going to vote for you in 2004.” And he said, “It's not about politics,” which is just bologna, because he went through the campaign trail, and last night he said he meets with families, and we say that we’re praying for him and stuff like that.

You know, that’s not -- that wasn't our experience. And everybody else I’ve talked to who have met with him have about the same experiences I do. He comes in, says I want to extend the gratitude of the nation and express my condolences, but he says it, and his eyes don't convey that, his heart doesn't convey that. We felt – we left our meeting with him feeling worse than when we walked in, feeling more determined to stop the madness in Iraq than before. "

When your a sociopath and a chronic Lier, words don't cost you anything.

[ovidsen]

9. The method to his madness.

It certainly puts the tears he shed after his speech last night at Ft. Bragg NC in perspective doesn't it?

It reminds me of that old political chestnut:

"The most important thing to show people is SINCERITY! If you can fake that... "

[thereismore]

10. My take on this photo is

that someone filled with compassion hugging a child like that would bow his head and close his eyes. In this case, this criminal is looking at the camera, waiting for the picture to be taken, then releasing the hug.
The child would never know that he was somewhere else (if it were not for the picture of course!). Some of you have seen the same thing. This man is a cold-blooded shifty-eyed chameleon.

[comsymp]

11. I've gotta call bullshit - it's a photoshop.

Here's the original:

[DearAbby]

12. It would be a touching Photo if it were real...and it could be.

Since he also has daughters, a fleeting momentary feeling of compassion.

To him it is all statistics numbers on a piece of paper...Here he has a face, similar to the faces of his daughters. It could very well be what it is at face value here...too bad it's just fleeting, soon forgotten.