The Compassionate One

Driving home this evening, I heard the President's remarks in California, when asked about the recent, tragic loss of life in Iraq:

Q: Mr. President, as you know, Sunday was the deadliest day in Iraq since the end of major combat. What was your reaction to the downing of the Chinook and the 16 soldiers who were killed on board? And, also, should Americans be prepared for more such deadly days ahead?

THE PRESIDENT: I am saddened any time that there's a loss of life. I'm saddened, because I know a family hurts. And there's a deep pain in somebody's heart. But I do want to remind the loved ones that their sons and daughters -- or the sons, in this case -- died for a cause greater than themselves, and a noble -- and a noble cause, which is the security of the United States. A free and secure Iraq is in our national security interests. We are at war.

There is a reason I highlighted the phrase, "But I do want to remind the loved ones that their sons and daughters -- or the sons, in this case". That is because both men and women died in that attack on Sunday. That is a fact which anyone who read the news this morning would have known. That is a fact which greeted me in my morning paper, sitting with my cup of coffee after I walked back from voting this morning. That is a fact which, I would think, the President could have at his fingertips if he wanted to.

But, our President has admitted that it's not important to him to follow the news.

It's not important to him to actually find out what's going on in the world, if his advisors don't want to tell him about something.

It's not important to him to know anything at all about the people who die every day fighting this war.

So, even though he was speaking in California, the home state of one of our female soldiers who perished on Sunday in a terrible attack, our President didn't even care enough to know that, and he essentially denied she ever existed.

And in related news, the government is now taking steps to fully staff the draft boards.

(Update on 11/11: The web page mentioned just above is now gone. It had been a notice inviting applications to serve on local draft boards. Does its absence mean the boards are now fully staffed, or just that a decision was made that the whole "re-start the draft" planning was getting too public?)

(Newer Update on 11/11: The always-reliable Memory Hole has the old version of that web page here.)