Here's what I like about the [president’s Baghdad] trip. It's going to make liberals scream like a bear trap just closed on their privates. –Steve H. of Little Tiny Lies
And it is extremely entertaining to read/listen to.
Consider, however, whether you think that the leaders of the Democratic Party would have been wildly opposed to taking a little Thanksgiving-time trip of their own to pose with the troops for photo ops. Seems to me that they would love to have done that. But they weren't invited.
Perhaps Matt missed Senator Hillary Clinton’s Thanksgiving-time “photo op” with the troops in Afghanistan. Understandable, what with it being overshadowed by the president’s little surprise and all. That said, I wonder whether the senator needed an engraved invitation from GWB to go. Knowing her persona, I doubt it. To be fair to the senator: what she did was just as honorable as the presidential deeds of the day, but it's not the same in scope. There’s only one Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces and she ain’t it.
I’ll even go out on a limb and say that most of the troops would rather see the Big Guy, rather than any senator or representative. Why? First, because the president is the one who sent them in the first place. Oh sure, the congress people voted for it, but the president had the final word.
And, secondly, because most of the military loves GWB, make no mistake about that. We didn’t see soldiers in Afghanistan whooping, hollering and jumping up and down when Senator Clinton walked into the DINFAC in Kabul (or wherever it was).
And here’s this gem in the Washington Post:
But Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, said that "in this day and age, there should have been a way to take more reporters. People are perfectly capable of maintaining a confidence for security reasons. It's a bad precedent." Once White House officials "decided to do a stealth trip, they bought into a whole series of things that are questionable."
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, criticized the White House correspondents who made the trip without spilling the secret. "That's just not kosher," he said. "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause."So there should have been more reporters on the trip because reporters are good at keeping secrets, but a good reporter would never keep a secret.
(Perhaps Taubman and Rosenstiel should have compared notes so that their incredibly stupid statements would have at least not contradicted each other.)
At least some Democrats and Leftists acknowledge that the trip was a bold and generous move. Or so I hear.
(Thanks to commenter Crimson Oath and to Dean)
