the joke

Bush's WMD 'Joke': Is the Media Still Laughing?
By Greg Mitchell
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000964303%20%20


[…]
…So allow me to focus, instead, on one brief moment in the Thursday forum, which took me back to a connected, equally brief, Washington moment last year. It represents one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of the American media, and presidency, yet is rarely mentioned today.

It occurred on March 24, 2004. The setting: The 60th annual black-tie dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association (with many print journalists there as guests) at the Hilton. On the menu: surf and turf. Attendance: 1500. The main speaker: President George W. Bush, one year into the Iraq war, with 500 Americans already dead.

Now you may recall what happened. President Bush, as usual at such gatherings of journalists, poked fun at himself. Great leeway is granted to presidents (and their spouses) at such events, allowing them to offer somewhat tasteless or even off-color barbs. Audiences love to laugh along with, rather than at, a president, for a change. It’s all in good fun, except when it’s in bad fun, such as on that night in March, 2004.

That night, in the middle of his stand-up routine before the, perhaps tipsy, journos, Bush showed on a screen behind him some candid on-the-job photos of himself. One featured him gazing out a window, as Bush narrated: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.” According to the transcript this was greeted with “laughter and applause.”

A few seconds later, he was shown looking under papers, behind drapes, and even under his desk, with this narration: “Nope, no weapons over there” (met with more “laughter and applause”) and then “Maybe under here?” (just “laughter” this time). Still searching, he settles for finding a photo revealing the Skull and Bones secret signal (more “laughter”).
[…]

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Mr Mitchell asks dana milbank of the Washington Post, if he’s still laughing over the tasteless and odious ‘no WMD joke’ skit the president bush put on for the gala he mentions above. I wonder too. Shit for brains milbank treats Rep. Conyers’ forum as a joke.

In Democrats Play House To Rally Against the War, Friday, June 17, 2005; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/16/AR2005061601570.html?nav=hcmodule, he mocks the efforts of hundreds of thousands of Americans who oppose bush’s obscene war, and who want answers to the questions posed by the memos recently published in the UK, the Sunday Times. Starting on May 1. That’s 7 fucking weeks, shithead. And you’re still laughing? Laughing about the fact that we are still killing kids in Iraq. And their mothers. And their fathers, and their brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles? And you’re still laughing at the more than 1700 American military killed?

For what, milbank? So little georgie can have a comedy skit for your entertainment? Because if that’s all it is, and that IS all there is, then you are one sick, perverted person. So, I tell you what, dana, go here, http://www.bushflash.com/year.html, and then go here, http://www.bushflash.com/y2.html. Then go visit the maimed and crippled military at Walter Reed. Then tell me if you’re still laughing. No, tell the world. That would fit your ego. You and bush. So wrapped in yourselves that you can’t see other people as real people. Tell me, do you hear voices too?