Text 25380, 114 rader
Skriven 2006-11-21 20:21:18 av Bob Sakowski (1:275/311)
Ärende: WOW!!  Truth to power times infinity
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Mr Bu$h visited Viet Nam the other day as part of a photo op swing
through Asia. Many of us have seen the ironic photo of Mr Bu$h and
Nguyen Minh, the President of Viet Nam, with a huge bust of Grandfather
Ho in the background. Today?s NY Times published a story about the trip
that neatly and accurately contrasts the differences between the Bu$h
and Clinton administrations.


    HANOI, Vietnam, Sunday, Nov. 19 ? President Bush likes speed golf
and speed tourism ? this is the man who did the treasures of Red Square
in less than 20 minutes ? but here in the lake-studded capital of a
nation desperately eager to connect with America, he set a record.

    On Saturday, Mr. Bush emerged from his hotel for only one
nonofficial event, a 15-minute visit to the Joint P.O.W./M.I.A.
Accounting Command, which searches for the remains of the 1,800
Americans still listed as missing in the Vietnam War.

    There were almost no Vietnamese present, just a series of tables
displaying photographs of the group?s painstaking work, and helmets,
shoes and replicas of bones recovered by the 425 members of the
command. He asked a few questions and then sped off in his motorcade.

This key paragraph highlights the Bu$hCo attitude about service members.
When they?re of no further use they?re of no interest.

On the other hand,

    [T]he mood of this trip could not have been more different from the
visit of another president, Bill Clinton, exactly six years ago this
weekend, when he seemed to be everywhere.

    In 2000, tens of thousands of Hanoi?s residents poured into the
streets to witness the visit of the first American head of state since
the end of the Vietnam War. Mr. Clinton toured the thousand-year-old
Temple of Literature, grabbed lunch at a noodle shop, argued with
Communist Party leaders about American imperialism and sifted the earth
for the remains of a missing airman.

    Mr. Clinton took the two sons of the missing airman, Lt. Col
Lawrence G. Evert, to a rice paddy in Tien Chau, a tiny town 17 miles
northeast of Hanoi. There, they searched for remnants of the colonel?s
F-150D [sic] Thunderchief, which crashed during a bombing run in 1967.
Scores of nearby villagers joined in the effort, and the soil gave up
the airman?s bones.

Ever mindful of the need to always catapult the propaganda bullshit the
America public,

    Mr. Bush?s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, conceded
that the president had not come into direct contact with ordinary [emp
added] Vietnamese, but said that they connected anyway.

    ?If you?d been part of the president?s motorcade as we?ve shuttled
back and forth,? he said, reporters would have seen that ?the president
has been doing a lot of waving and getting a lot of waving and smiles.?

    He continued: ?I think he?s gotten a real sense of the warmth of the
Vietnamese people and their willingness to put a very difficult period
for both the United States and Vietnam behind them.?

I?m sure the ?ordinary? Vietnamese got exactly the correct opinion of a
coddled, arrogant elitist who lives in his own special bubble of
entitlement.

    Mr. Bush?plans to highlight the new Vietnam on Sunday and Monday at
its stock exchange in Ho Chi Minh City. Then he moves on to Indonesia
for a few hours to meet ?civic leaders,? something he did three years
ago in a stopover in Bali.

Because dead American pilots are of no use, but a stock exchange is all
about money, which is very important to Mr Bu$h.

    Mr. Bush is not staying overnight in the world?s most populous
Muslim nation, which Washington has portrayed as a critical test in the
struggle to promote moderate, democratic Islamic states. The Secret
Service said it was too dangerous, so he will spend the night in
Hawaii.

I?m sure they consider attacks against the august personage much less
likely in Hawaii.

Best part of the story is predictive:

    [Viet Nam] is also a place that reminds visitors of who prevailed
over the Americans. One building that Mr. Bush zipped past is the
Military History Museum, which displays a giant sculpture made of the
broken fuselages and wings of downed French and American aircraft. The
place was close to empty when Mr. Bush and his colleagues were meeting,
but had he stopped by he would have heard a pretty one-sided account of
the December 1972 bombing of Hanoi, and seen photographs of a troubled
President Lyndon Johnson.

    Just down the road, a giant banner mixes old and new. ?The Great Ho
Chi Minh Is Still Alive in Our Modernizaton and Industrial Progress!?
it proclaims of the man who proclaimed Vietnamese independence.

George Bu$h doesn?t want to see museums dedicated to the strength of
will of a nation that beat the world?s most powerful military. He
doesn?t want to be reminded that his dreams of overseas empire in the
Middle East are crumbling to dust on the trash heap that used to be
Iraq. He prefers his own fantasy world where he is the Great Warrior
Leader, striding victoriously across the flight decks of aircraft
carriers, his sock-inflated flight suit wobbling with the false manhood
that he projects wherever he goes.

-- 

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American
public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
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