I really wasn’t going to mention this anymore after writing about it twice last week, but if the White House is still talking about it, I figure I can too.
To review, Bush took a Navy fighter jet to the USS Abraham Lincoln to deliver a speech from the aircraft carrier’s flight deck about the end of fighting in Iraq. He could have taken a helicopter, but the White House said it was too far from the shore — “hundreds of miles” officials asserted, a claim that was later proven to be false. (In fact, the administration had the ship turn around so the backdrop to Bush’s speech would be the better-for-TV ocean, rather than the clearly visible California coast line.) The manipulated photo-op also delayed the crew’s return to shore by another day so Bush could score some cheap political points.
Though the event was almost a week ago, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was still responding to questions yesterday about Bush’s staged trip.
Fleischer told reporters that Bush decided to forgo the use of the helicopter so the president could experience the sensation the real pilots do.
Here’s the exchange between Fleischer and a White House reporter:
Reporter: “On the visit to the aircraft carrier, I believe you told us from this podium that the reason the President had to take a jet out was because the carrier would be hundreds of miles offshore. And as it turned out, it was way, way less than that.”
Fleischer: “Correct. Correct.”
Reporter: “Were you misled?”
Fleischer: “No, the original planning was exactly as I said and when I — when I announced it, that was exactly how the plan had been anticipated. And then, the President wanted to land, exactly as I told you on the flight out there, which was the day of the trip when we knew the exact — or when we knew how close the carrier was. The President wanted to land on it, on an aircraft that would allow him to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing. He wanted to see it as realistically as possible. And that’s why, once the initial decision was made to fly out on the Viking, even when a helicopter option became doable, the President decided instead he wanted to still take the Viking. But, no, that was all part of the original planning.”
So, in other words, Bush delayed the crew from returning home and used a fighter jet for a 30 mile flight so he could experience the excitement real military pilots feel? You mean the president manipulated all these events simply because he thought it’d be fun?
Fleischer’s remarks renewed criticism from congressional Democrats who are still angry about the White House staging a campaign commercial on an aircraft carrier, using military resources and U.S. troops as political props.
“I do not begrudge his salute to America’s warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely and skillfully, as have their countrymen still in Iraq,” said Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.). “But I do question the motives of a deskbound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech.”
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) took his concerns one step further. Waxman, the ranking Dem on the House Government Reform Committee has sent a formal request to the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm, for a “full accounting of the costs associated with the president’s trip,” because “last week’s event — which had clear political overtones — was paid for by American taxpayers.”
I’ll let you know whether or not Waxman gets an answer to his inquiry.