Oliver Willis

30 Responses to “Priorities”

1. 1 Fuming Mucker
   Aug 9th, 2005 at 10:08 am

   Cindy Sheehan: Braver than Osama bin-Laden.

2. 2 scratch
   Aug 9th, 2005 at 10:08 am

   Maybe if Bush goes out to arrest her, that will distract him long enough that he’ll stop making it rain here in D.C.

3. 3 sirkowski
   Aug 9th, 2005 at 2:08 pm

   What a cunt…

   (I’m talking about Bush)

4. 4 Dugger
   Aug 9th, 2005 at 3:08 pm

   Seems OK to me if you enjoy a couple of lefty political advocacy groups going after Bush. Happens all the time. But if you think this is some kind of middle-American grass roots uprising against the war or Bush, guess again. Also, fine if you believe in Santa and believe we could have, but for some strange reason didn’t, capture Osama. You might ask THE on-site military commander what his assessment was. He said we NEVER had OBL in our grasp. NEVER.

   Dugger, “Every one of you listening to my voice, tell the world… Watch the skies, everywhere, keep looking…”

5. 5 SaveFarris
   Aug 9th, 2005 at 3:08 pm

   By this logic, the US Military should have never gone into Afghanistan. With Hitler and the Olympic Bomber still on the loose, what right do we have chasing after Osama?

6. 6 BinkyBoy
   Aug 9th, 2005 at 4:08 pm

   Oh oh, wait, is that a kid stealing candy? Quick, we need to organize a nuclear strike.

   Farris, are you trying to top your idiocies, one day at a time or are you just normally a grandiose maggot? This post had nothing to do with Tora Bora, yet you seem to want to just throw random crap at the walls and see what sticks.

7. 7 Quaker in a Basement
   Aug 9th, 2005 at 4:08 pm

   Also, fine if you believe in Santa and believe we could have, but for some strange reason didn t, capture Osama. You might ask THE on-site military commander what his assessment was. He said we NEVER had OBL in our grasp. NEVER.

   It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, Dugger:

   Asked to comment on Berntsen’s remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. “We don’t know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001,” Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. “Bin Laden was never within our grasp.” Berntsen says Franks is “a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was.”

8. 8 O.Y.E.
   Aug 9th, 2005 at 5:08 pm

   The U.S. never could have arrested Osama?
   Fine, for the sake of argument I’ll play along with that.

   But can you Bush supporters tell me why Bush is planning to arrest Cindy Sheehan, yet he hasn’t found the person responsible for mailing those anthrax letters in 2001?

   Again, what the hell does this say about Bush’s priorities?

9. 9 southpaw
   Aug 9th, 2005 at 6:08 pm

   Why not just invite her into his house and have a face-to-face meeting on live TV with her. He can use Laura to be his body guard just in case things get out of control.

10. 10 Jadegold
    Aug 9th, 2005 at 6:08 pm

    Every Repug out there is a big fan of racial profiling. After all, they claim, it’s not the little old ladies who will hijack airliners and crash them into buildings. Better to detain all those dark-skinned, swarthy males with foreign-sounding names.

    Who really believes Cindy Sheehan presents any threat whatsoever to AWOL George?

11. 11 scratch
    Aug 9th, 2005 at 7:08 pm

    can you Bush supporters tell me why Bush is planning to arrest Cindy Sheehan…

    Bush is not planning to arrest Cindy Sheehan.

    yet he hasn t found the person responsible for mailing those anthrax letters in 2001?

    Um, you do know that he’s not a policeman, right?

12. 12 JD
    Aug 9th, 2005 at 7:08 pm

    scratch : Quit trying to use something like logic or rational thought with these people.

13. 13 JD
    Aug 9th, 2005 at 9:08 pm

    Is this the same Ms. Sheehan that met with President Bush previously? I really feel for this lady, as it seems apparent that she is going through the grieving process from the loss of her son, but at this point, she is being exploited by all of the anti-Bush anti-war groups. Her recollection of her prior experience with the President seems to now be clouded by her anger and grief. I certainly hope that she can come to some type of closure for herself and her family.

14. 14 Quaker in a Basement
    Aug 9th, 2005 at 11:08 pm

    Her recollection of her prior experience with the President seems to now be clouded by her anger and grief.

    No, YOUR recollection of her prior experience seems to be clouded by either reading Drudge or listening to Fox News. Those are the people who are spreading the “she must be craaaaazy” story.

    JD, doesn’t it bother you at all that the usual gang of character assassins will take on anyone, anyone at all, who dares to criticize George Bush?

15. 15 Quaker in a Basement
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 12:08 am

    Here. The Philly Daily News explains it way better than I can.

16. 16 scratch
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 7:08 am

    Quaker…

    I don’t think she’s crazy, but I heard her on NPR yesterday and her position on the war is identical to any number of anti-Iraq-war, anti-Bush citizens who are heard on the airwaves daily (Bush lied, Bush Bush made stuff up, etc.) Her unfathomable grief gets her a pass from heated rebuttal, but it doesn’t make her right. And from a practical standpoint, it doesn’t earn her a second private audience with the President. Not that she wants a private audience…she actually wants to make a very public political statement.

17. 17 SaveFarris
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 9:08 am

    This post had nothing to do with Tora Bora, yet you seem to want to just throw random crap at the walls and see what sticks.

    I’m not the one that brought up Tora Bora in relation to Cindy Sheehan. If you’ll look at the top of this post, you’ll see it was Oliver.

    “Random crap” my a**…

18. 18 neoconsrloopy
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 11:08 am

    Binky, Ferris is actually a performance artist, playing the role of a Dittohead Republican. He is an expert on satire, but still must find a way to top himself lest we become bored with the show. So he has to constantly listen to Hannity and Limbo to find new material.

    He is now performing the “deflection” technique. It goes like this.

    Sane person: “I hear the Yankees need some pitching.”
    Ferris: “Well at least my relatives aren’t traitors”.

    See? Now you have two choices:
    1. Defend your relatives’ patriotism.
    2. Ignore him.

    I suggest #2

19. 19 JD
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 11:08 am

    Quaker,

    You will note that I never said, or even implied, that she was craaaaazy, or even crazy. I think she is a grief stricken mother, and I feel for her. She has already had her audience with the President, and the contemporaneous records indicate that it was a pleasant and helpful experience for herself and her family. Now it appears that her grief, and likely the urging on by the interest groups, have clouded her recollection.

    She has had her audience with the President. All that is going on now is a publicity stunt, and she is being used as a pawn by the groups around her. It is sad.

20. 20 SaveFarris
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 1:08 pm

    That’d be a perfectly apt example … if your relative’s last name was Rivera or Mussina.

    What’s wrong with bringing up the hunt for Osama in the comments WHEN OLIVER DID IT IN THE POST? Seems to me that’s the very definition of “on-topic”.

21. 21 Quaker in a Basement
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 1:08 pm

    So, JD, your assertion is that her “recollection is clouded by her grief.”

    You’re saying that her judgment and perceptions are impaired by mental stress. In the vernacular: crazy. In right-wing insinuation: craaaaazy.

    What “groups” are using her? What indication do you have that she’s not lucid? If there’s anyone whose perceptions are clouded, it’s those who rely on the stories planted by oppo researchers on Drudge’s website to malign a Gold Star mother.

22. 22 Quaker in a Basement
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 2:08 pm

    not trying to malign her, just making an observation.

    No, an observation would be something like: “She’s been sitting outside the ‘ranch’ for several days,” or “She’s been on television a lot lately,” or “She dresses funny.” You know, something that can be observed. That would be an observation.

    What you’re making is called speculation. Her recollection is “clouded”? She might imagine that her first meeting took place on board a UFO. On the other hand, her recollection might be perfect. We have no way of knowing. You’re guessing. She’s been affected by “the urging of interest groups”? What groups? You forget to say. And even if you did say, you have no way of judging whether anyone’s urging has had any effect whatsoever.

    …she has received one more personal audience with the President of the United States than most people, and one more than she is entitled to.

    Well, maybe she’s got another son whose sacrifice can buy her a ticket to speak to His Highness a second time. Is that what it would take to be “entitled”?

23. 23 JD
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 2:08 pm

    I never said she was crazy, not did I insinuate that she was. She is acting out of her grief and anger, in my humble opinion. I do not read Drudge, and am not trying to malign her, just making an observation.

    My guess is that she has received one more personal audience with the President of the United States than most people, and one more than she is entitled to.

24. 24 Quaker in a Basement
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 3:08 pm

    Oh and by the way, you ignored a question I asked earlier:

    JD, doesn t it bother you at all that the usual gang of character assassins will take on anyone, anyone at all, who dares to criticize George Bush?

    The article that detailed Ms. Sheehan’s earlier meeting with the President wasn’t online until somebody dug it up to compare to her more recent remarks.

    I wonder who.

25. 25 JD
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 5:08 pm

    Observation, speculation, what have you … that is what people do on these comment threads. In your infinite wisdom, you have managed to point out that I chose the wrong word. Congrats.

    Her recollection of the initial meeting, as described in her recent media release appears to be vastly different than the contemporaneous quotes she supplied to the Vacaville paper. I speculated that maybe her mourning and pain from the loss of her son has altered her recollection of the events. I would suspect that if the President had acted rude, or inappropriate at the time, she would have said so at the time, not over a year later.

    What groups? All of the anti-war / anti-Bush groups that are urging her on, trying to make her into some media celebrity for their cause. You are right, I have no evidence that their efforts have led to her current recollection of the prior events, it is mere speculation on my part.

    The President’s job is not to act as a grief counselor for every family member of every American killed or injured in combat. It is unfortunate that she experienced this loss, but to continue to demand an audience with the President serves no purpose. It is a PR stunt. What would she gain from it, other than trying to make the President look bad? In WW1 and WW2, how many personal audiences did the Presidents give to the families of injured and killed soldiers?

    As far as being “entitled” goes, not one single person is entitled to this. You can demand one, hold press conferences, etc … but she is not entitled to the one she is currently demanding any more than she was entitled to the first one. I would love my own personal audience with any sitting President, regardless of party, and could scream from the rooftops for it, but would never be entitled to it, and never get it.

    What character assassins? Or am I to accept that her character has been assassinated as being a fact, because you say so. Maybe people are questioning what she is doing today, since it is inconsistent with her contemporaneous comments after the first meeting.

    I wonder who dug that up too. Maybe the reporter that wrote the orignal story. Maybe a reader of the local paper that saw the recent publicity that she has been receiving. Who knows?

26. 26 Quaker in a Basement
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 6:08 pm

    I wonder who dug that up too. Maybe the reporter that wrote the orignal story. Maybe a reader of the local paper that saw the recent publicity that she has been receiving. Who knows?

    Let me redirect your attention to the link to the Philly Daily News I supplied upthread. The story reappeared online via Mr. Drudge’s site. The Philly Daily News connects the dots.

    Let me also direct your attention to this article from the paper that published her original remarks. Here’s an excerpt:

    Vacaville mother Cindy Sheehan has not flip-flopped position, but has used her outrage and indignation to fuel an anti-war movement following the death of her son, Casey, in Iraq following an ambush in April 2004, according to Editor Diane Barney.

    You mentioned earlier that you don’t read Drudge. Wherever you read it, Drudge was the ultimate source as he’s the one who first published Sheehan’s so-called “change-of-heart.”

27. 27 JD
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 7:08 pm

    As far as the names of the groups you requested …

    How about AFSC, Code Pink, United For Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace, and the Crawford Peace House ?

28. 28 JD
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 7:08 pm

    Let’s see here …

    If we accept your analysis as being true, and Drudge was responsible for digging up that old article, how exactly does that matter? Is that not the job of a journalist/bloggger/pundit?

    The original artcile also had the following quotes …

    “We haven’t been happy with the way the war has been handled,” Cindy said. “The president has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached.”
    “…But in the end, the family decided against such talk, deferring to how they believed Casey would have wanted them to act.
    “…We have a lot of respect for the office of the president, and I have a new respect for him because he was sincere and he didn’t have to take the time to meet with us,” Pat said.

    So, her contemporaneous thoughts were that the President’s meeting with them was helpful to their family, and they did not want to get into the “why did our son die” kind of talk because they believed that their son would not have wanted them to do so. Now, her recollection is that the President acted inappropriately, was rude, gave them mean looks, and was dismissive of them? I have no doubt that she was against the war from the get-go, and never suggested otherwise. However, when it comes to describing her meeting with the President, one has to question what has caused such a drastic shift in her memory.

29. 29 Quaker in a Basement
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 9:08 pm

    “How about AFSC, Code Pink, United For Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace, and the Crawford Peace House ?”

    Good. You have some names. (I’m especially fond of my homies at AFSC.) Now: what makes you think any of these people have influenced the way Ms. Sheehan thinks about the war or the death of her son?

    Once again, your point rests on the assumption that Ms. Sheehan is incapable of thinking for herself.

30. 30 JD
    Aug 10th, 2005 at 11:08 pm

    No, that is not and was not my point, but you knew that. It is obvious that she is capable of thinking for herself. At the same time, one individual is not likely to be able to draw this amount of media coverage, get articles of clothing up for sale on a website, get the website launched, etc … and it does not seem to be such a stretch to think that these groups are aiding her efforts, since her own words indicates that they have an anti-war movement there in Texas, with the aforementioned groups.

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