Thursday, May 06, 2004
Follow up to my prior post.....
The excerpt below is taken from an article appearing in today's New York Times. So if cabinet members and military personnel offer apologies, and Mclellan can issue a statement that the President is sorry after acknowledging that the President offered no apology during his interviews, then why didn't Bush just say he was sorry when he had the ear of the Muslim world and the Iraqi people? Apparently, there is no philosophical or policy reason for withholding the apology (hence the recent round of apologies), just gross incompetence:
"Although the president did not apologize, his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and the deputy secretary of state, Richard L. Armitage, did so in interviews with Arab broadcasters on Tuesday. The new commandant of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, also apologized to the Iraqi people, as did the military spokesman in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.
Asked why the president had passed up the opportunity to apologize directly to Iraqis and Muslims in the Middle East who were particularly offended by the nature of the abuse, his spokesman, Scott McClellan, offered an apology in Mr. Bush's stead.
"The president is sorry for what occurred and the pain that it has caused," Mr. McClellan said at the daily White House news briefing. "It does not represent what America stands for. America stands for much better than what happened.""
"Although the president did not apologize, his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and the deputy secretary of state, Richard L. Armitage, did so in interviews with Arab broadcasters on Tuesday. The new commandant of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, also apologized to the Iraqi people, as did the military spokesman in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.
Asked why the president had passed up the opportunity to apologize directly to Iraqis and Muslims in the Middle East who were particularly offended by the nature of the abuse, his spokesman, Scott McClellan, offered an apology in Mr. Bush's stead.
"The president is sorry for what occurred and the pain that it has caused," Mr. McClellan said at the daily White House news briefing. "It does not represent what America stands for. America stands for much better than what happened.""
