You wrote "When we think of Bush's character, we're likely to focus on the administration's proposed budget cuts for veterans, the children indefinitely detained at Abu Ghraib, maybe the story of how the young lad Bush loaded up live frogs with firecrackers in order to watch them explode."
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2) Everyone at Abu Ghbraib is "indefinetly detained"--or at least was until the recent Supreme Court decisions. Are you denying there are children at Abu Ghraib? That's an uphill argument for you. Do you want to make it?
Are you denying that these "children" were engaged in activities designed to kill American military members? And if they were, why shouldn't they be detained?
Do you also subscribe to the anti-gun school of statistics that include 25 year olds in stats about "children killed by firearms" or some of the more laughable studies that included anyone with a living parent as a "child"?
OK, I'll give you the wordsmithing award on that one, so no, I don't want to atttempt that argument. I would like to see your support of the other two claims that you made (veterans' cuts and exploding frogs), though.
5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires
I read a first-hand account of a soldier charged with protection of a fuel convoy through Falluja (posted here on FR I recall), and he told of 12-year-old boys firing AK-47s on the convoy from overpasses, and of one young boy he was forced to kill, as I recall - the boy had come up next to his disabled truck, knocked him down with a round in his vest, and didn't retreat from his warning shots.
The word "Children" doesn't mean the same thing in Iraq as it does in tony Manhattan neighborhoods, and if there are children in Abu Ghraib, it is undoubtedly because they were, among other things, trying to kill US and coalition troops with machine guns or RPGs.
With respect to Bush's youthful exploits - my cousins and I once tried to load up live frogs with firecrackers when we were about 10, until my uncle and my dad intervened and whipped our butts.
Boys, it would seem, are innately barbaric no matter what their social stratum, especially in packs. It is the task of responsible parents to civilize them so that they grow into respectable men, as both I and George Bush have managed to do.