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Tale Told by an Idiot?

By Larry Johnson on November 18, 2006 at 10:48 AM in Current Affairs

by
W. Patrick Lang

Today’s Washington Post recounts the President’s latest musings on past events in Vietnam:

"Laura and I were talking about — we were talking about how amazing it is we’re here in Vietnam," Bush said. "And one of the most poignant moments of the drivehe was, literally, saved, in one way, by the people pulling him out."
in was passing the lake where John McCain got pulled out of the lake.
And he’s a friend of ours. He suffered a lot as a result of his
imprisonment, and yet, we passed the place where

In fact, according to McCain, who broke both arms and his right knee while ejecting from his A-4 Skyhawk, he was hauled out of the lake on two bamboo poles and beaten on the shore by an angry mob.

In his autobiography, "Faith of My Fathers," McCain wrote that the crowd, shouting wildly, stripped his clothes off, "spitting on me, kicking and striking me repeatedly." A woman, possibly a nurse, intervened, and a Vietnamese army truck arrived "to take me away from this group of aggrieved citizens who seemed intent on killing me," McCain wrote.

He described subsequent repeated beatings and torture at the hands of his captors in the notorious Hoa Lo prison, known to American POWs as the "Hanoi Hilton."" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/17/AR2006111700224_2.html

Bush’s comments are a "tale told by an idiot."

Now, maybe it is understandable that the inhabitants of Hanoi wanted
to kill this enemy pilot who had fallen into their hands. Bad things
often happen in the heat of battle, but for Bush to torture this long
past event into something with which he can feel good about McCain’s
agony and the people of Hanoi is reprehensible.

I understand that he has also held communist Vietnam up as an
example of what Iraq may become "if we do not quit." Has he missed the
fact that there is no real freedom in Vietnam now? Has he missed the
fact that, having deprived the peoples of Vietnam of their religious
rights, the government is now giving those rights back as privileges?
Has he missed the fact that the non-Vietnamese Montagnard peoples of
Vietnam are still treated as sub-human by the Vietnamese and their
government? Has he missed that?

The Viet Minh would easily have unified Vietnam in 1954-55 after the
defeat of the French. They had defeated all their native competitors.
Only the growing political and then military intervention of the United
States prevented that until 1975. Unity was not a problem in Vietnam.
The government that Bush seems to admire had no serious problem in
"bringing the country together" after we left.

Maybe we should get out of the way so that another "unity" government that Bush can praise can take over in Iraq.

kim

Did you notice the caveat “in one way” applied to his description of McCain’s being saved by those pulling him from the lake. Maybe ‘in one way’ means ‘saved from drowning’.

Hey, he was outed from the water. Who dunnit, and why?
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Rider

“saved in one way”

Be positive. Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
kim

Hey, he was underwater and he was outed as cowardly payback by people who didn’t like his swimming technique.
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Anthony Scott

George Bush has said so many stupid things- – -For so long- – - that most Americans have resign themselves to thinking of him as a sort of Retard in Chief. He’s like some demented/ developmentally challenged relative that we have come to accept because the situation requires it be so. But this latest, by the seat of his pants, remark was so below the level of what should be regarded as a responsible answer to a rather pertinent question that even those most inured of Americans should have risen up en masse and shouted- – -You have got to be Fucking Kidding me!!!!! I paraphrase but it was something like this – - -“What I learned from Vietnam is that you don’t quit”. Only George Bush could be so oblivious to History, strategic reality, and any sense of decorum as it relates to the time and place of his remarks. I don’t find it necessary to belabor the point by going on at length as it relates to the disastrous parallels between the twin disasters of the Vietnam/Iraq wars( I believe a preponderance of the American people have a pretty good grasp of them) I do, however, have to comment one of the more outrageously stupid aspects of Georgie’s comments. He was being hosted by the very country under discussion and essentially said that in his view- – - a war that had cost over one million Vietnamese their lives should have not been brought to an end. So much for the concept of being a gracious guest in another Country Huh!!! I would have thought that someone might have asked him what he would have preferred to have happened(Perhaps someone did as I did not see the actual press conference) but they might have been afraid he might go on a real tear. The Romans were a brutal people, they would take their enfeebled out into the cold woods and leave them there to die. We Americans are, however, a much more advanced and compassionate lot- – -We are willing to leave one of our own blithering idiots in the highest office in the land for the sake of appearances
dfong63

if it was a grand thing for mccain to be saved by the vietnamese in this fashion, then how much grander would it be for bush to be saved by the iraqis, in a similar way. can hardly wait.
Pat Rick

Ozymandius?

Visigoths are damned to walk the earth for eternity.

Outed or was it black balloon raining down on Pelosi or was I just seeing things………
Donovan Fraser

Amen Kim,
well put….
FullRaidersAlchemist

What a birthday present this has become.

The Col. finally jumped the shark on Dubya.

Two Ho’s in that picture.
One of them can be bought for money.
kim

The Black Hand reigns balloon Death.
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kim

Reins? Rains?

One of them.
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http://profile.typekey.com/JimGormley/ Pvt. Keepout

Total Dick Cheney did what today? How about David Addington? John Hannah? David Wurmser?
I don’t know either but I suspect it damaged the country more than Fredo’s insipid remarks.

At the end of the day, Fredo is stored away in a steamer trunk until the next day’s opening act.
Total Dick & Associates have a big laugh over the days fallen soldiers and tote up the receipts.

As contemptible as Fredo acts, he’s merely a trivial diversion from Total Dick’s criminal antics.
Leslie

Why is Bush touting Vietnamese “freedoms” when he ought to be talking to North Korea and Iran, pulling us out of Iraq and redeploying to Afghanistan? Or hasn’t he heard al Qaeda is baaaack!
Rose

Bush talks when he shouldn’t and asks no questions when he should. The NY Times has an interesting article comparing Georgie’s visit with Clinton’s visit to Viet Nam.

Bush showed no interest while visiting the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command center. He spent little time looking at the artifacts of our missing soldiers.

Truly, he insults the rest of the world as well as us.
Thinker

Aw Larry, Pat’s a spoilsport. Bush tells it so much better. I mean, lets face it war is warm fuzzy fun. I’m sure McCain will do the honorable thing. He’s not committed suicide yet, so I assume he does and says, retracts, tones down anything that pleases his master. He is like Blair – a counterfeit socialist. Well except he isn’t a socialist.

Oh, by the way, has that great American company Scotts included all the philatelic issues of Vietnam in their latest catalogues?

Censorship is fun!