Today’s headline news, in all its various establishment media permutations, was full of stories about Still-President George W. Bush paying a visit to wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center this morning. A couple added that this was the site of one of his administration’s most serious scandals.
Those reports were talking about the appalling conditions at Walter Reed given broad attention after Dana Priest and Anne Hull published a front-page exposé last year in the Washington Post—they were not talking about the scandal that is the cause of so many of those wounds. That would be the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
When I heard the story, I smirked and shook my head in disgust, figuring it was just another lame, lame duck attempt at legacy burnishing.
Well, it was that, but it was so much more. . . or less.
It turns out, as is now being reported, that Bush had an MRI this morning at Walter Reed for a chronic pain in his left shoulder. Yes, that’s right. Bush went to WRAMC because he wasn’t feeling well.
I suppose it’s a chicken and egg thing. . . kind of. It certainly would have looked bad if word had gotten out that Bush was at the medical center and didn’t stop in to look after the men and women who owe their disability checks to his vainglorious boondoggle. But would George W. have gone out there at all if he hadn’t had his own needs to look after?
My guess is a certain “no.”
Bush, even at his most “engaged” was never big on confronting his mistakes—especially ones made so (pardon this) flesh. The man was, is, and will forever be a reality chicken.
Now, as anyone looking at an unemployment check will confirm, the decider has decided he’s decided enough. He’s over it, done his bit, given what he can give. You don’t like him being president any more? Fine, he just won’t be.
So, while it’s just me s’posin’, I’m going to say that if Bush hadn’t felt the need, there’s no way he goes to Reed.
Which might have been just fine with the brave men and women confronting reality every day. . . whether they choose to or not.
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The wounded from this misbegotten war will be with us for decades. The damage to our nation, perhaps forever.
Bush is all about Bush-league 24/7 & thanks for nailing him so eloquently for today’s caper at Walter Reed.
Digg is open
But would George W. have gone out there at all if he hadn’t had his own needs to look after?
In a word…. uh-uh. no fucking way. jerkweed never even thought about the place until he needed an mri. where can you get an mri for being a chronic asshole?
yup. hopefully we’ll get to see more of them in the classrooms and fewer on the streets
“Reality chicken.” I like it.
I like the term used in those old western movies even better since it fits Bush like a glove: yellow bellied coward, wasn’t it? Free and easy with others lives, others jobs, self absorbed, self involved, his needs the only needs that matter. Even his tears for the wounded were completely about him and how bad it all made HIM feel.
A spoiled, arrogant, lazy rich boy to the last. Get gone, little man.
And the costs to our society, monetary and spiritual, incalculable.
One of the first things that President Obama should do, IMO, is rescind the ban on filming military flights returning soldier’s bodies to the United States. I don’t know how it supposedly respects our soldiers to deliberately ignore their sacrifices as a matter of policy.
The War Preznit will now joke that he too has a war wound.
I wonder if he dressed up as a soldier for his visit there…
To my mind, the C word hasn’t been used enough to describe these guys. Bush and Cheney, and many of their supporters, are flat out cowards. Their reactions to the issues of the day have been cowardly. Cheney’s undisclosed location, btw: under his bed.
Yellow bellied and lily-livered.
Exactly what you said.
The chronic left-shoulder pain is easily diagnosed from a distance. It happens when you fall asleep drunk on the soft on your left side every night.
He should be right as rain by March or April after the doctors point this out to Pickles.
Will he claim an injury due to ducking from shoes?
Is there a larger disability pension to be had?
Who knows what he’s signed these last eight years.
I guess this means that Bush would have “of course” attended the return of the coffins of soldiers that died in Iraq at Dover if Cheney had died of a heart attack abroad at his remains had been flown in there.
“Well, I happened to be down there, so I decided to drop by”.
Deb Howell still holds up that Priest/Hull series as an example of the best WaPo journalism, without ever acknowledging the irony: that there wouldn’t be any Irak war-wounded if they’d put Walter Pincus on page A-1 during the runup to Clusterfuck’s Great Mess-O-Potamian Misadventure.
Glad you highlighted this. The MSM accepted the White House meme without a murmur, “Bush Visits Wounded”. His purpose in visiting the hospital at all was to get free medical care, not to improve the conditions in which he keeps our wounded.
Same old, same old. Bush has been taking photo-ops with those whose funding he’s about to cut since someone told him to sit in a corner of the Oval Office.
Well, I was worried that it was his right shoulder that had been acting up…that might imply he’s been busy signing thousands of
pardonsautographs.I can’t imagine having to look those men and women in the eye knowing you were responsible for what happened to them because you wanted to line the pockets of your friends. There is a special place in hell reserved for this kind of evil.
These clowns typically go to Bethesda so they don’t have to deal with the broken riffraff. He probably got lost and played the “oh well, while I’m here” card.
Beat me to it, you did. *g*
Check me on this, cinnamonape: I think Shrub is left-handed.
Possibly anticipating this, John Solomon at Washington Times published an “exclusive” story about Bush and Cheney “comforting” the troops and their families privately.
I’ll say good for him for meeting with them, and in the spirit of the holidays I’ll try not to think about whether or not they were hand-picked to not confront him.
I searched Google and found some sites say Shrub is a lefty, but the more reliable sites say he is right handed. Poppy, GHW Bush is left-handed.
Thanks Gregg.