Posted on 05/15/2008 10:31:05 AM PDT by Reagan Man
Sen. Joe Biden, piling on to Democratic complaints about President Bush’s speech in Israel today:
“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset . . . and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”
Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along."
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Democrats have interpreted the comments as an attack on Sen. Barack Obama, and Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the president was out of line.
“He is the guy who has weakened us,” he said. “He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It’s his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.”
Biden noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both suggested that the United States ought to find a way to talk more with its enemies.
"If he thinks this is appeasement, is he going to come back and fire his own cabinet?” Biden asked. “Is he going to fire Condi Rice?”
In a separate statement, Sen. John Kerry said that Bush "is still playing the disgusting and dangerous political game Karl Rove perfected, which is insulting to every American and disrespectful to our ally Israel. George Bush should be making Israel secure, not slandering Barack Obama from the Knesset."
The White House insists that Bush wasn’t referring specifically to Obama, an argument that Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) called "baloney."
"There is no escaping what the president is doing," said Durbin, who supports Obama. "It is an attack on Sen. Obama’s position that we should not be avoiding even those we disagree with when it comes to negotiations and diplomacy."
Durbin called Bush's remarks "unfair and really unfortunate."
Correction:
“He has REVEALED the number of terrorists in the world.”
Call it artistic license. : )
Do we know to which Senator (from the past) the President was referring?
Takes one to know one, Biden.
Hitler and the Nazis were enlightened and reasonable compared to Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
Becuase she's three times smarter than Madeline Albright, and immeasuarably easier on the eye.
What exactly about the statement, that Bush made, are they objecting to?
" I understand when you're running for office you sometimes think the world revolves around you. That is not always true. And it is not true in this case."
Absolutely right on! Obama's reaction is childishly egotistical. And revealing.
he never mentioned anyone by name and they all immediatly think he was talking about them! Touchy aren’t they
Answered my own question - William Edgar Borah.
From http://www.kevincmurphy.com/williamborah5.html:
“As Germany began to annex neighboring nations, Borah grew more erratic and unreasonable in his assessment of European politics. He derided British visitors who came “to spread their propaganda” and attacked France and England for veiling their national interests in the language of democracy and dictatorship. Worse still, although Borah despised any dictatorial pretensions in Roosevelt, the Idahoan revealed his admiration for Hitler. “There are so many great sides to him,” Borah said of Hitler in 1938.42 After the Fuehrer had taken the Suedetenland, Borah emoted, “Gad, what a chance Hitler has! If he only moderates his religious and racial intolerance, he would take his place beside Charlemagne. He has taken Europe without firing a shot.” Even after the war had started in 1939, a war Borah had repeatedly stated in public would never happen and that he curiously labeled as “phony” after its inception, the Senator lamented, “Lord, if I could only have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”
Pretty serious (and literate) slam by the President. No wonder it hurts so bad.
OK, I have a new nickname : Obama Borahma
Biden, Kerry, Durbin. If given the chance, I would spit right in their face then laugh about it. I detest these f-ing a-holes as much as satan himself.
Blatantly false. President Bush has been saying the same thing for years over and over again.
He's addressing the entire surrender community. Not just Obama.
These scheisters (Biden, Kerry et al) are spewing political propoganda.
Obama attacks Bush over Iran barb
I don't think the speech mentioned either Obama or Iran....
I think the venue and the occasion was perfect for these words.
I am telling you, the more I read about Borah, the more on target the President’s comment seems. From the same article:
“William Edgar Borah (1865-1940) of Idaho, considered by his contemporaries a first-class statesman and orator in the tradition of Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan, spent thirty-three tumultuous years as one of the most powerful and persuasive members of the United States Senate. From the time of his arrival in Washington in 1907 until his death of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1940, Borah was well known and highly regarded both in the capital and across the nation for the force and quantity of his rhetoric. In 1936, Time Magazine declared him “the most famed Senator of this century” and “the great Moral force of the Senate, the one member who could arise and deal with Right and Wrong in an electric way.”1 Esteemed around the world as “the Lion of Idaho” and “the Great Opposer,” he played a pivotal role through five Presidential administrations in shaping the domestic and foreign agendas of early twentieth-century American public policy.”
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