GOP senator ‘underwhelmed’ by Bush’s Iraq knowledge

November 23, 2007

When the president speaks publicly about the war in Iraq, he often seems confused and uninformed. Maybe he speaks more intelligently in private? Maybe not. (via TP)

At a luncheon in Chattanooga on Tuesday, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) spoke with 500 supporters about recent events, including recent discussions with the president about the war. Apparently, Corker noticed that Bush doesn’t know very much.

“I was in the White House a number of times to talk about the issue, and I may rankle some in the room saying this, but I was very underwhelmed with what discussions took place at the White House,” Corker said.

A few minutes later during a question and answer session a man in the audience asked him to clarify his statement.

“I was concerned about your statement that you were underwhelmed with what was going on in the White House. Did you mean with him or with his staff?”

In response, Corker said, “Let me say this. George Bush is a very compassionate person. He’s a very good person. And a lot of people don’t see that in him, and there’s many people in this room who might disagree with that…. I just felt a little bit underwhelmed by our discussions, the complexity of them, the depth of them.

Within a minute or so, Corker went from being “a little bit underwhelmed” to “very underwhelmed.”

He added, “I’m just being honest. I’ve said that to them, and to him, and to others. I kind of in a way wish I hadn’t said it today.”

Too late.

Welcome to the club, buddy.

  • Fairnata, I guess Corker didn’t get the lip-gloss treatment from Bush like Gannon and Rove got, so he’s feeling a little cheated.

    The Republicans have to come out of the closet so they can get their man-love around easier. They obviously are pretty desirous for cock and male-on-male blowjobs among their male political leaders.

  • I can only imagine what the Texan Butthead’s discussion/briefing on Iraq sounded like: Heh hehe. Iraq. hehe Heh. Surge. Heh Heh Working. Heh. Gonna need lots of Heh money. hehe Troops Heh. Picking on blackwater is Bad Heh hehe. Any heh questions?

  • Coming from a dumbass like Corker, that says a lot

    Well, I guess he can always get Chris Mathews to smoke his pole, as everybody knows. He should be happy with that.

  • Fairnata wrote:

    Coming from a dumbass like Corker, that says a lot.

    Uh oh, did some little boy tell mommy that the other little boys were stealing cookies from the cookie jar? Shame shame shame! Don’t be a squeal!

  • …the fact that Bush is dumb as a stump is not exactly news. It’s been too damn bad for the country for the run of his administration that more Republicans didn’t gather up their balls between them and say it publicly instead of supporting party first and countrymen second. And we all will pay for that lack for a long time to come…

  • Republicans are starting to think that Bush is dumb as a stump? I think that most really knew it all along but wouldn’t say it publicly as long as it served their own purposes. Now, with the elections coming up in ’08 and facing dire poll results, it serves their purpose to try to untie or at least loosen the knot by which they tied themselves to that idiot.

  • Yeah, well, they might privately think Bush is dumb, and they may be scared about next year’s elections, but they are still giving Bush every vote he’s asking for in Congress.

    Very few Republicans have broken with the Bush line when it comes to votes.

    I’m not impressed with the alleged Republican “rethinking”.

  • phoebes,

    The Repubs can’t help themselves being the lemmings they are. I think that has more to do with their authoritarian personalities which means they are psycophants to power (kiss up, kick down.)

  • Bush has been a classic case of failure that gets passed up the line instead of down: with each new failure, instead of sending him back to get more experience, or keep plugging away until he got something right and made a success of it – which would prove he was capable of learning – because he was a child of privilege, whose family could not be embarrassed by his being sent back to work harder, he was passed up the line – given jobs and positions where even more should have been required of him. More intelligence, more devotion to hard work – more, not less.

    All that did was land the least qualified, least able person in the Oval Office, where all his failings and deficits and bad habits and stunted emotional growth have made him quite possibly the most dangerous man in America, who has been aided and abetted, and also used to a fare-thee-well, by others with more intelligence and more diabolical agendas.

    A lot of us knew that in 2000. You would have thought even more should have known that in 2004. Even if more of the common folk had not caught on, you would think the people who came into regular contact with him would have figured it out – but to be fair, some of them may have been beneficiaries of the same kind of system, which may explain why it may not be your imagination that many of the people elected to Congress are not even as smart as your dog. I think this is another great argument for total public financing of elections – there are a lot of really smart and capable people who could be making a difference for this country if the financial playing field were really level. Money has not only corrupted the process, it has really dumbed it down.

    Which brings us back to George Bush and Bob Corker. I guess Corker now feels bad for letting us in on his great insight into the president’s lack of understanding of the finer and more complex points of the whole Iraq issue. That he doesn’t realize most of us figured this out years ago isn’t a very flattering commentary on Mr. Corker’s grasp of the finer points. That he’s more concerned about possibly hurting the president’s feelings, instead of realizing that he’s kind of just insulted himself? Priceless.

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