W. poses as fighter pilot, taxpayers foot the bill

[mburbank]

Byrd Rips Bush's Aircraft Carrier Use

By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Questioning the motives of a "desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior," Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd on Tuesday reproached President Bush (news - web sites) for flying onto an aircraft carrier last week to declare an end of major fighting in Iraq

"I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw," Byrd said on the Senate floor.

Byrd, 85, of West Virginia, is the Senate's most senior member and was one of the most outspoken critics of the Iraq war.

Dressed in a flight suit, Bush was flown onto the USS Abraham Lincoln on Thursday, his small S-3B Viking jet making a tailhook landing. The ship was near San Diego on its return from action in the Persian Gulf.

With the sea as his backdrop, Bush announced that the United States and its allies had prevailed against Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) said Byrd's criticisms are "a disservice to the men and women of our military who deserved to be thanked in person."

"Senator Byrd did not support the president at the beginning of this, and it is no surprise that he does not support the president at the end," Fleischer said. "Senator Byrd is a patriot, but on this we disagree.

Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record) of California asked the General Accounting Office (news - web sites), Congress's investigative arm, to find out the cost of the president's trip.

The event "had clear political overtones," yet taxpayers footed the bill, wrote Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee (news - web sites), to the GAO.

Byrd contrasted the speech with the "simple dignity" of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address during the Civil War.

"I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely, ... but I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech," he said.

He said American blood has been shed defending Bush's policies. "This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial," he said.

"To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the president to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech," he said.

Fleischer has rejected any suggestion that the landing was intended to provide campaign footage for Bush's re-election campaign.

Earlier Tuesday, he also said Bush decided to land on the carrier on a jet instead of his usual helicopter because the president wanted "to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing. He wanted to see it as realistically as possible."

Waxman said Fleischer had provided conflicting accounts of the reasons for the president's trip by jet, initially indicating that the carrier would be hundreds of miles offshore, too far from land to be reached by helicopter.

[VinceZeb]

Amazing that Democrats worry about the cost of photo ops when a Republican is president. Hell, I am suprised they worry about the cost of anything, considering it isn't their money to spend.

[sspadowsky]

Yet it's your money, and you're not outraged.
________
Vaporizer genie

[mburbank]

I'm pretty sure every landing on an aircraft deck is a pretty expensive deal. It might even have cost more of YOUR money than a 'salmon fillet'.

But you can't just say "yeah, that was wasteful and pointless".

[VinceZeb]

So the guy flew a plane? Big deal. We were going to use money anyway.

Besides, its funny that the guy leading this charge is a former Klansmen.

[Miss Modular]

We were going to use money anyway.

And yet people like you are outraged when we spend money on poor people.

[sspadowsky]

Well, of course, because they didn't work for it like Dubya did.
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AVANDIA CLASS ACTION

[kellychaos]

Can you say "re-election"? I'm not really outraged by it. All parties, when given a chance, do this sort of thing. Maybe they don't do something as obvious, wasteful and pointless but they DO do it. It's the nature of the beast, I'm afraid. :/

[mburbank]

Any minute now Vinth will be acting as Boortzs ventriliquist dummy and letting ya'll know about the picture of Clinton on the deck of an aircraft carrier. He'll want to know why Clinton got a free pass.

Since there's no creddit on the photo you can't look into the circumstances, but:

A.) I hate Clinton, and I hated him while he was in office. Posturing like this is one of the reasons. I hated it when Dukakis road in that tank and he got ridiculed to hell and back and it didn't cost me a penny.

B.) The MAIN question is, was the fighter that carried either of them going from wherever to the the aircraft carrier in question anyway, and if not, were there other, cheaper ways to get there?

C.) Why did Ari Fliescher initially say the reason Bush was going by fighter was because the crrier was way out of helicopter range and that it had nothing to do with posturing?

D.) How much money got blown here? Estimates currently range from zero to a million dollars, depending on who's talking. I'll wait.