You're right about the figurehead, but she's also making people uncomfortable by grieving unconventionally, especially people who are more traditional and presumably more likely to throw blind loyalty to Bush.

We also are good at forgetting people after their 15 minutes is up. That's why I think Bush should let her in and kick her right back out. Hell, she got what she wanted, and no one expects him to agree with her.

Yep. it was me. What's funny about the story and the speech itself is that there were actually way more Mountain Home AFB personnel there than Idaho National Guard. Yet almost his entire speech spoke about the "citizen" soldiers. The base bused up over 2,700 people and had many base civilians drive up.


the whole thing was a preaching to the choir affair. The gung-ho crowd gave about 20-25+ standing ovations. After the first few that praised the military and their sacrifices my friend (whose husband was getting back from Iraq that day) just sat through all these standing O's. It was quite sad. My buddy, who's a first sargeant, said that he couldn't stop laughing at this group of young republicans who kept going nuts with the U-S-A chants and doing the Arsenio arm pump. What a bunch of nerds.

Bush kept saying that the terrorists "envy our freedom" that's why they hate us. He said it about 8 times. What's funny is Bill Maher mentions this in his latest HBO stand-up.

Oh......"It's not just America who wants to have the entire world free it's also God who wants everyone to have freedom"(something like that). Followed by thunderous applause.

It was definitely interesting. The crowd was probably 90% military and their families.


I got to see Air Force 1 take off while waiting at the Airport for my friend.

He told me that many of the Iraqi's he worked with said that they live in worse conditions and in constant fear of being killed by "insurgents". He said that any Iraqi who works with America is targeted to be killed.

Most people he worked with only had electricity for an hour or two a night.

What he saw in Baghdad is a lot different than the one Bush spoke about only 4 hours earlier.