About Obama's Staged Photo-Op at Dover Air-Base - UPDATED: Villainous Company Routs Firedoglake!

People often criticize me for "dishonoring" the office of the president (the anarcho-socialist James Webb, for example), but I wrote a respectful post yesterday in response to President Obama's visit to Dover: "Obama Honors Fallen Troops at Dover." Sure, the president's visit was perhaps the worst instance of political grandstanding since taking office, but knowing he's already stabbing our troops in the back, I imagine Obama sleeps better having staged the Dover event.

Nice Deb has the best post on this, "Obama At Dover Air Force Base: Tribute or Photo-Op?"

It's too awful to think that the President would be so base and cynical as to use the death of these brave and worthy men to prop himself up. One is inclined to hope that he only had the best of intentions.

But one wonders.

Via The Mudville Gazette I noticed that The New York Times had originally reported in their article, Obama Visits Air Base to Honor Returning Dead:

The images and the sentiment of the president’s five-hour trip to Delaware were intended by the White House to convey to the nation that Mr. Obama was not making his Afghanistan decision lightly or in haste.

That line was changed to this:

The image of the commander in chief standing on a darkened tarmac, offering a salute to one of the soldiers, highlighted the poignancy of a decision he is facing.

Greyhawk noted that the President’s approval ratings on Afghanistan have been in free fall:

How to turn the situation around? Some say more troops, some say change strategy, others say withdraw – but someone in the White House got the bright idea that now would be a good time for a photo op.

See also, Right Wing Nut House, "OBAMA’S TIMELY VISIT TO DOVER."

My friend Mark at Snooper's Report tipped me off to a despicable post over at our familiar hate-site, Firedoglake. From Blue Texan, "Disgraceful: In 8 Years, George W. Bush Never Greeted Fallen Troops."

See Mark's post, "Blue Texan: A Blustering and Bloviating Moron." Also, in response to the administration, "Dover Dead: Obama's Disgrace."

Also, from Cassandra, at Villainous Company, on the nihilist Firedoglake:

Obama could have visited Dover at any time during the past 8 months - 10, if you take into account the fact that there was no need to have the press document his visit for the TV cameras. But I don't think the facts matter to these people at all. Their hatred is so strong that it blinds them to anything but simmering anger and poisonous contempt. To them, fallen warriors are nothing more than cannon fodder, conscripted against their will - even in death - to fight an obscene war against a President who is no longer in office. Consumed by hatred, they just can't let it go.

What they cannot understand is that unlike Barack Obama, who makes sure the few sops he throws to the military are well documented by the press, George Bush understood our wish not to be used as photo ops. It ought to be simple to understand why George Bush was never photographed at Dover: under George Bush, the press were not allowed at Dover. So there would be no photograph. But more importantly, President Bush understood that the families of the fallen had given enough. The last thing grieving families want is to have a camera or a microphone shoved in their faces; to have legions of Secret Service, White House aides, and other support staff invade an exquisitely private moment that ought to be reserved for those who knew and loved the deceased. Our funerals are not public spectacles, but private observances of grief. Our last President, unlike the antiwar left, understood and respected that.

Read the whole thing. Cassandra includes this video, and adds: "When hatred is so strong that its adherents fear the truth, no factual rebuttal is likely to pierce the wall of lies that surrounds the willfully ignorant. But the truth remains, regardless of their stubborn refusal to admit it":

Also, Cassandra's doing exemplary work with the Project Valor IT fundraiser, "Project Valour IT - Who, What, When, Where, Why (and How!)".

Please join me making a contribution, here.

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UPDATE: Welcome Firedoglake readers, "Attention Bush Apologists: Reagan Greeted Fallen Americans at an Air Force Base, Idiots."

Have a look around, learn something, then behold Cassandra's response, "Attention, Firedoglake":

Reading, as they say, is fundamental:

It appears my post yesterday got the teabaggers all riled up.

Apparently, their position is that George W. Bush’s refusal to honor fallen Americans as they return to this country for the last time — something his predecessors all did — is proof that a) he loves the troops more than anyone else and; b) because Obama did so, he shamefully, cynically exploited our dead.

As much as I hate to have to interpret plain English for someone who apparently does not know how to read, there are times when such measures are necessary.

Nowhere in Confederate Yankee's, Donald Douglas' or Gateway Pundit's posts (the three Blue Texan linked to "support" his dishonest claim) do any of these bloggers claim that Bush loved the troops any more than any other President.

When the only way you can "win" an argument is to manufacture false claims and then "disprove" them, you're in trouble.

Furthermore, the Dover ban was not in effect when Reagan was President.

It was put in place by President Bush, Sr. in 1991 in response to CNN doing exactly what Firedoglake just did - politicizing the deaths of American soldiers ...

More at the link.

But Blue Texan, you're messin' with the wrong woman, LOL!