600 soliders dead a laughing matter for George Bush?
George W. does it again. He made the following comments at the Washington Correspondents Dinner which made light of whether or not there will be any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Yes, that Dinner is all about making fun of yourself but we're at war here. This has been a matter of life and death of the hundred thousand plus soldiers in Iraq, and to make light of the reasons why almost 600 of them have sacrificied their lives is not appropriate. Just to get a few cheap laughs. Either we're at war and this is a serious matter, or it is just fun and games.
Here is a transcript from the New York Times of an interview that Charlie Gibson did with Terry McAuliffe, DNC chairman, and Ed Gillespie, RNC chairman on Good Morning America:
GIBSON: Let me go to the issue that we mentioned at the top of the show, the president joking about weapons of mass destruction. His comments at a dinner the other night. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Those weapons of mass destruction got to be somewhere. (LAUGHTER) (END VIDEO CLIP)
GIBSON: Ed Gillespie, the Democrats saying he cheapens the reason that he called people to war.
GILLESPIE: Charlie, you know, the Democrats, they will go after anything. The fact is, you can hear the laughter in the room. You've been to those dinners, Terry has been to those dinners, I've been to those dinners. There is a long-standing tradition of the president making light of serious matters and self-deprecating humor. And it's unfortunate to see...
GIBSON: But this one was war, Ed. This one was war.
GILLESPIE: I understand, Charlie. And the fact is that this is the custom in these things, and presidents have made jokes about very serious matters at these dinners. You can hear the laughter. The people in the room obviously saw the humor in it at that moment. And to play it back now in a different context is unfair, frankly, I have to say.
GIBSON: Terry McAuliffe, we do always laugh at those dinners, joke at those dinners in Washington.
MCAULIFFE: I agree with you, Charlie, this was about war. It's inappropriate to the thousands of people obviously who have been wounded over there, the soldiers we have today. This is a very serious issue. We've lost hundreds of troops, as you know, over there. Let's not be laughing about not being able to find weapons of mass destruction.
GILLESPIE: Look, Charlie...
MCAULIFFE: Let me finish, Ed, because you were talking. I will finish. There are a lot of legitimate questions about this president, how he misled the American public on the issue of weapons of mass destruction. He told America that they had weapons of mass destruction, Dick Cheney said it, Secretary Rumsfeld. They're not there. That is the issue. And we should not to it to a new step to make fun of the situation. We have troops, there are boots on the ground today in Iraq. We need to make sure that we're doing what we can to protect those troops. We certainly should not be making light of the situation. We've just lost several soldiers this week. There is nothing funny about it. But once again, the president has gone over the line.
And this Salon.com story includes a statement from John Kerry on this:
Democratic candidate John Kerry's campaign said in a statement Thursday, ``If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought.''