More Bush is Out of Touch on Middle East Crisis: He’d Rather Talk About Roast Pig
by Pamela LeaveyThe UK Observer reports that as Israel widens their Lebanon assault “a single strike on a convoy of families fleeing the fighting in a village near Tyre in the south of the country that killed more than 20 people, most of them children.” As the crisis grows more intense in both Lebanon and Israel, Bush is showing just how out of touch with the Middle East Crisis he really is.
While American citizens in Lebanon are waiting to be evacuated, I reported earlier that Bush is enjoying photo-op moments at the G8 Summit and perhaps he’s enjoying something else as well.
Newsday reported yesterday on Bush’s wild pig tale (hat tip to reader Dotti J), as “Israeli warplanes were preparing an attack on Lebanon Thursday afternoon, and a Lebanese militia was aiming a rocket at the ancient Israeli city of Safed.” It appears that Bush was more interested in “bantering with reporters in Germany about a pig,” than answering questions about the Middle East crisis…
Bush kept bringing up the roast wild boar he was about to dine on at a banquet that night, even when asked about the swelling crisis in the Middle East, where pig meat is forbidden to religious Jews and Muslims.
“Does it concern you that the Beirut airport has been bombed?” a reporter asked. “And do you see a risk of triggering a wider war?”
“I thought you were going to ask me about the pig,” Bush replied blithely. Then he brought the pig up again — for the fifth time — before giving a long answer that ended with his saying Israel needed to protect itself.
“He was asked a serious question,” said Ian Lustick, a Middle East expert now at the University of Pennsylvania, and his answer “epitomized his disengagement in the Middle East.”
AP reports that the UN, the European Union and Italy have “pushed ahead with separate efforts Sunday to try to end the fighting between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.” That’s far more than the Bush administration has been willing to do.
A senior U.N. envoy led a delegation visiting Beirut for talks with Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. Vijay Nambiar, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special political adviser, called afterward for the release of captured Israeli soldiers, the protection of civilians and infrastructure and expressed support for Lebanon’s appeal for a cease-fire.
The U.N. team was expected to visit Israel to meet with officials there, Lebanese media reports said.
A U.S. State Department specialist, James Jeffrey, said in Washington that U.S. officials were in directed at “bringing an end to the conflict.” However, the United States was not “advocating a cease-fire at this time.”
In the wake of the G8 statement released earlier today, “Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper had barely finished praising a Middle East statement he had crafted with other world leaders when news emerged of Canadian deaths in an Israeli strike in Lebanon.” AP reports that “Seven Canadians were killed in Lebanon on Sunday when shells hit a house in the south of the country.” Canada is working with Britain and France, to secure commercial vessels and position them “off the coast of Lebanon to prepare for an evacuation.”
Perhaps, when Bush is done cracking tasteless pig jokes, driving around in a golf cart and biking the grounds of the G8 Summit, he might actually focus on the crisis in the Middle East and getting Americans out of the war torn region as well… That might be too much to hope for from the President Bystander.
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The imbecile is too far gone. There is no way he can function as leader of this country, and be that withdrawn. There is no hope for that bastard!! He has gone far past the lame duck status. He is insane!!
Hey There,
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All I could see when I looked at that picture is: Bush starring as Jack in The Lord of the Flies.
I guess I wasn’t reading or watching the news closely enough. I thought the only asinine thing GW Bush did during the G8 Summit was force-massaging Angela Merkel’s neck and shoulders. Nope. Add to his list of inanities (from various sources; please, dear readers, add others I bypassed, for a complete list):
They (George, Laura, Angela) walked past a red-coated band playing a medley of songs like “Hooray for the Red, White and Blue,” and Bush plucked the conductor’s wand from his hand and led the band for a few notes.
Then he and Merkel posed for pictures with the band as its members played on, Bush startling a woman playing a flute by poking her on the shoulder.
After both leaders spoke to the crowd, Bush said: “Thanks for having us. Let’s go eat.”
At a joint news conference with Merkel earlier in Stralsund, Bush kept mentioning a wild boar, slaughtered and roasted the traditional way, that he planned to share at the dinner. “I’m looking forward to the feast you’re going to have tonight. I understand I may have the honor of slicing the pig,” Bush told Merkel.
A few minutes later — after discussing Iran, the Middle East, the merits of press freedoms in Russia and progress on the Doha round of free trade talks — Bush returned to the boar.
“Thank you for having me,” he told Merkel. “Looking forward to that pig tonight.” Bush answered a few more questions but kept coming back to the boar for a third, then a fourth time.
“Does it concern you that the Beirut airport has been bombed?” a reporter asked. “And do you see a risk of triggering a wider war?”
“I thought you were going to ask me about the pig,” Bush replied blithely. Then he brought the pig up again — for the fifth time — before giving a long answer that ended with his saying Israel needed to protect itself.
Bush’s apparent boredom with the meeting of international leaders, his eagerness to go home, where he has “got something to do,” and his apparent confusion about geography. Bush said, during his evening speech: “Gotta go home. Gotta do sumthin tonight. Get ona plane. Go home. It’s a long flight.”
Bush to President Hu Jintao of China: “Where you going? Home? This is your neighborhood; it won’t take you long to get home. . . . You get home in 8 hours? Me too! Russia is a big country, and you’re a big country.”
Bush’s private remarks to British Prime Minister Tony Blair: “See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it’s over. I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen.” [Syria has no power to stop the current Mideast flare-up and it's not even a major player] … The rest of the scene was like something out of a high school cafeteria. Bush sat there, talking with what looked like seventeen doughnuts stuffed into his gob, while poor Tony tried to discuss matters of life and death. He sounded for all the world like a teacher attempting to explain something to an exceptionally dull student. His tone suggested infinite patience and a touch of true sadness.