Posted on 08/12/2006 12:59:12 PM PDT by Wolfstar
_ Tuesday, the President will participate in a National Security Council and Homeland Security Council briefing at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia. He will have a meeting with the counterterrorism team, attend lunch with the counterterrorism and homeland security teams, and also meet separately with the homeland security team. According to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, these are long-scheduled meetings, and are not a reaction to the recently discovered plot to blow up flights between Britain and the United States. However, the investigation will be part of their discussion.
_ Wednesday, the President will travel to York, Pennsylvania, where he will participate in a tour of Harley Davidson vehicle operations. He will also participate in a roundtable on the economy and attend a Lynn Swann for Governor reception.
_ Thursday, the President will sign HR4, the Pension Protection Act of 2006, at the White House. Later in the day he will travel to Camp David.
_ Friday, GWB will participate in a meeting with his economic advisers. He will spend Saturday at Camp David and return to the White House on Sunday, the 20th.
What other theme could there be this Saturday, just two days after the magnificent work the United Kingdom did in breaking up a monstrous terrorist plot to take down multiple airliners? Today's photo essay tells a story that will be more fully told in the years to come, but photos can be uniquely revealing at any time.
Rarely on the world stage are such close professional, personal, and consequential bonds formed between two national leaders such as the remarkable relationship between the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Honorable Tony Blair, and the President of the United States, the Honorable George W. Bush. (This thread is a tribute to both of them. I place Mr. Blair's name first here only in the same sense as one puts a guest in one's home first.)
Certainly other comparable pairings occurred in the vast sweep of human history: At the birth of our country, the unlikely duo of Washington and Lafayette formed both a life-long friendship and political alliance that eventually brought France into the War for Independence on the American side. Closer to our own time, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, while perhaps never truly friends, nevertheless formed a very close alliance that towered over their era and won WWII. More recently, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher formed a life-long friendship and political alliance that defeated the Soviet Union.
Those relationships (and comparable parings going back as far as Antony and Cleopatra) certainly have make their mark on world history. But there is something quite unique about the bond between Tony Blair and George Bush. Something that is at once easy to see in these photos, and yet difficult to capture in words. The best way I can put it is that they truly appear to have become like brothers and yet more.
In their respective domestic politics, the two men could hardly be more different. We American conservatives surely would chafe under Mr. Blair's domestic policies, which would have a home in the American Democrat Party. Nor are the two men in total lock-step in international affairs. Yet, as the photos on this thread will clearly show, the two have formed a deep, comfortable friendship that is likely to last their entire lives. And, on the central issue of our times, international Islamofacist terrorism, these two men certainly have provided rock-solid world leadership on a par with that of Roosevelt and Churchill.
Unlike the definitive ending to WWII, we are not likely to know how the story of these times plays out for decades to come. Yet we do know now that these two great men -- I use great here in a sense far larger than mundane politics -- have given their all. They've tried their best and then some. They have done everything possible to protect the peoples of the United States and United Kingdom from the monsters that walk among us. Through it all, they seem to fit each other like a comfortable pair of gloves with the fingers intertwined, each giving support and strength to the other.
The "Brothers 'B' " have freed tens of millions, handing those people not a paternalistic neo-colonialism, but a chance to make or break their own futures. In other words, true freedom. Those critics who constantly wail about the Iraq "quagmire" either refuse to or genuinely can't get it: True freedom means the Iraqi people must make of their own country what they will. If they want it to be awash in blood, it will. If they want to restore it to "Garden of Eden" beauty, they can. They are free to choose. Free will. What God bequeathed to us all. This is what George W. Bush and Tony Blair have given to the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq -- a chance to exercise their own free will.
Putting their careers and, in a real sense, their lives on the line, the team of Bush and Blair have made excruciatingly hard decisions in the face vicious opposition (a couple of small examples included here so the photo essay is complete in the story it tells). After Thursday's events, at long last opinion is being written that they have been vindicated. (See this editorial from Investors Business Daily: Vindicated.)
What those freed from the yoke of tyranny by these men (and the blood of the troops they lead) will make of their opportunities, only time will tell -- and it's up to them to write the final chapters in this story.
Hi Conor. Good day to you. :)
Excellent. Thanks for posting.
Great array of pics, Wolfstar - thanks.
Over here, girlfriend, for a respite from the trench --- you're going to love this one and I was first! LOL!
You're welcome, onyx. All but a small number of photos are on my Photobucket account, so you'll be able to see them anytime. A few are directly from the WH website. Those might be taken down for the new presidential website in 2009.
Smile...glad you enjoyed it.
LOL!
You're welcome. :)
You're welcome, Conor.
LOL!
Better start thinking of what you want on your toaster for when Snugs shows up later. :)
That Camp David one was when President Bush said that they used the same toothpaste, and poor old Tony didn't quite know what to think. ;)
(And you're right onyx. A little R&R is in order!)
I'd hate to have to decide --- so I will go with your photo of the day!
Thanks for pinging me. I read this all the time but often don't make comments.
LOL!
It's been a joy to do this particular photo essay. What I didn't find, though, were photos of GWB and Tony at the ranch. In casual clothes. You wouldn't happen to have one around somewhere that you could post here?
I can't stop myself from going over the pics again and again!
We caught another one in the trench and I have pinged you. :)
I often choose pics for their photographic qualities. I like the composition and lighting in that one. Besides, it goes with my shoulder to shoulder graphic. :)
You're very welcome. :)
I'm glad you decided to post here today.
I love that one too.
ohiowfan will have pics from the ranch,... but we're momentarily sort of busy swatting Bush bashers.
Maybe some of the CIA rogues have finally been exterminated ... just in time to prevent critical leaks and stop what could've been devastation and chaos of incomparable magnitude. Whoever is responsible, thank you and thank God for the quiet intelligence, security and law enforcement warriors, monitoring, deciphering, filtering, connecting and uncovering evil 24/7.
I think I need 12 toasters today...lol.
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