4101 dead, Bush at peace: "I didn't sacrifice my core beliefs to satisfy critics or satisfy pundits"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Posted June 17, 2008 7:00 AM
The Swamp

by Mark Silva



http://weblogs.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/blog/2008/06/bush_regrets_rhetoric_not_iraq.html

While facing repeated questions about the war in Iraq during a weeklong tour of Europe, President George W. Bush has made it clear: He regrets only some of the words he used, not the actions his administration took.

"Presidents don't get to do 're-dos,' they don't get to do 'look backs ... ifs,' " Bush told a British newspaper toward the end of what is likely to be the last tour of a continent where some leaders and much of the public have openly opposed the war.

"History will judge the tactics," Bush added Monday, facing the question anew at a news conference with Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London, where a reporter asked Bush, "Is it possible you got it wrong?"

"Removing Saddam Hussein was not wrong," the president replied. "It was the right thing to do."

All Bush regrets, he told reporters during a tour that carried him through Slovenia, Italy, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, is some of his harsher rhetoric.

"I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric," the president said in an interview with The Times of London at the start of this journey.

He meant phrases such as "bring them on" and "dead or alive."

See the rest of the analysis in today's Tribune:

Bush used such words at his Texas ranch with Gen. Tommy Franks in December 2001, saying he didn't much care whether Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was captured or killed. "You know, dead or alive is fine with me," Bush said then.

Words such as these, he told The Times last week, "indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace."

Bush was asked about that concession during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Reporter: "Do you actually just regret your war rhetoric, or do you regret having gone to war with Iraq?"

"I don't regret it at all," Bush replied. "Removing Saddam Hussein made the world a safer place."

"The guy said, 'Now what could you do over?' " Bush said of the Times interviewer. "First of all, you don't get to do things over in my line of work. But I could have used better rhetoric to indicate that, one, we tried to exhaust the diplomacy in Iraq; two, that I don't like war."

The president told French television in an interview taped before his arrival in Paris last week: "Sometimes my rhetoric was a little--was misunderstood. I mean, I can remember saying, you know, 'dead or alive,' which sent ... signals that could be easily misinterpreted."

After more than five years in Iraq, most Americans have turned against the war. A majority tell pollsters they believe the invasion was a mistake.

"Nothing worse than a politician making decisions based upon the last Gallup Poll when people's lives are at stake, or where they have made a sacrifice," Bush said in an interview with The Observer, a British newspaper, recounting his private meetings with the families of fallen soldiers.

"I will tell you this: Many, many families look at me trying to determine whether or not, one, I believed that it was necessary, and two, whether or not I'm going to let their son or daughter kind of lie in an empty grave when it comes to the sacrifice they made. They want to know whether or not the president--if he believes it was necessary--whether or not he's going to see this thing through, regardless of what they're screaming on the TV sets."

The president maintained that his own "spirits are pretty high. I mean, I'm--you got to believe, you know?

"You got to have a set of beliefs that are the foundation for your very being," he told The Observer. "Otherwise, these currents and tides and 24-hour news and politics will kind of leave you adrift."

Bush, returning to Washington, where Democratic congressional leaders still are trying to find a way to rein in U.S. troops at war, insisted he remains at peace with himself: "I tell people that when I get home I'm going to look in that mirror and say, 'I didn't sacrifice my core beliefs to satisfy critics or satisfy pundits.' "

[flakey_foont]

1. asshole

[Drum]

2. No, Georgie, you sacrificed a lot of other people instead.

:(

[Johonny]

6. but not HIS KIDS

they apparently had over priorities.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. It's easy to say that...

When you have paid no real price for your actions and the White House menu for the week looks so good.

[Faygo Kid]

4. Tough to add anything - only that impeachment should never have been taken off the table.

He intentionally lied us into this unnecessary and immoral war. And he gets off, yet Congress voted to impeach his predecessor for having lied about a blow job.

What a fucking pathetic set of "leaders" we have.

Moral cowards who refused to do the right thing, and now we have to listen to this drivel because he was not held responsible.

[Disturbed]

5. "we tried to exhaust the diplomacy in Iraq"

Another blatant lie from Busholini.



Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War

Article IV
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States

Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression

Article VI
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114

Article XIV
Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency

Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy

Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to "Black Sites" Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture

Article XXIV
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment

Article XXV
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens

[margotb822]

7. His core beliefs:

greed, hate, and lying

[TheWatcher]

8. 'I didn't sacrifice my core beliefs to satisfy critics or satisfy pundits.'

Neither did Hitler, Pol Pot, Amin, Stalin, etc.

You murdering filth.

[Drum]

9. Kick!

:kick: