Questioning the motives of a "desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior," Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd on Tuesday reproached President Bush for flying onto an aircraft carrier last week to declare an end of major fighting in Iraq.
"I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw," Byrd said on the Senate floor.
Byrd, 85, of West Virginia, is the Senate's most senior member and was one of the most outspoken critics of the Iraq war.
Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record) of California asked the General Accounting Office, Congress's investigative arm, to find out the cost of the president's trip.
The event "had clear political overtones," yet taxpayers footed the bill, wrote Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, to the GAO.
Byrd contrasted the speech with the "simple dignity" of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address during the Civil War.
I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely, ... but I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech," he said.
He said American blood has been shed defending Bush's policies. "This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial," he said.
"To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the president to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech," he said.
Fleischer has rejected any suggestion that the landing was intended to provide campaign footage for Bush's re-election campaign.
Earlier Tuesday, he also said Bush decided to land on the carrier on a jet instead of his usual helicopter because the president wanted "to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing. He wanted to see it as realistically as possible."
Waxman said Fleischer had provided conflicting accounts of the reasons for the president's trip by jet, initially indicating that the carrier would be hundreds of miles offshore, too far from land to be reached by helicopter.
I, however, think he took the jet for entirely different reasons....
President Bush recoils after hitting his head,Thursday, May 1, 2003, as he boarded Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House. Bush is headed for California where he will fly and land on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as it steams toward San Diego. Bush will spend the night aboard the carrier.
Apparently our fearless leader cannot disembark the helicopter without giving himself a concussion. So yes, riding shotgun in a speedy jet IS much more impressive than falling out of a helicopter. Ahhh, memories of President Ford...
(Mess with my trees will you....)
