Real Reason Bush Won’t Join Obama at Ground Zero (Hint: Sore Loser)
Former president George W. Bush won’t be attending the memorial at Ground Zero with President Obama “in part because he feels his team is getting short shrift in the decade-long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden,” says the New York Daily News.
Sources say ”He viewed this as an Obama victory lap. He doesn’t feel personally snubbed and appreciates the invitation, but Obama’s claiming all the credit and a lot of other people deserve some of it.”
Those close to Bush says his handlers want to exploit his appearance with Obama, that the event ”was for the benefit of Obama, and Obama withheld credit from people Bush believes deserved it”
Bush, baby, you’ve got sore loser written all over your face.
Let’s break this down simply:
1. Al-Qaeda attacked US embassies in Africa in 1998.
2. Democratic President Bill Clinton names him “America’s Top Enemy”
3. Clinton fires missiles at bin Laden. Bin Laden escapes.
4. Republican George W. Bush elected president.
5. September 11, 2001 terror attacks occur in New York.
6 Bush says “We’re gonna smoke him out”, fires more missiles.
7. 6 MONTHS later, Bush says this:
8. Bush remains in office for two presidential terms.
9. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is berated by Republican candidate Senator McCain for focusing on bin Laden:
10. Ten years after Bush says he’s not concerned about bin Laden, President Obama orders a gutsy attack that kills Osama bin Laden
11. Obama invites Bush to Ground Zero for a closing-chapter memorial
12. Bush declines because he feels his contributions were ignored.
Summary:
- Democratic administration name bin Laden America’s top enemy, start the hunt
- Worst ever attack on American soil happens during a Republican administration
- Democratic administration finds and kills bin Laden
- Republicans whine
Now politically I can understand his decision. It’s win-win for Obama.
If Bush attends, Bush appears to be a sidekick, the guy in second place. If Bush doesn’t show up Obama stays in the spotlight. But really, if ever there was a time for a sore loser to slough politics, wouldn’t it be now?
*
Full bin Laden timeline below from TVNZ:
1957 – Osama bin Mohammad bin Awad bin Laden born in Riyadh, one of more than 50 children of millionaire businessman. There are conflicting accounts of his precise date of birth.
1976 – Studies management and economics at university in Jeddah.
Dec 26, 1979 – Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. From 1984, bin Laden is involved in Peshawar-based Services Office to support Arab volunteers arriving to fight Soviet forces.
1986 - Bin Laden moves to Peshawar, begins importing arms and forms his own small brigade of volunteer fighters.
1988 – Al Qaeda (The Base) is established as a magnet for radical Muslims seeking a more fundamentalist brand of government in their home countries and joined in common hatred of the United States, Israel and U.S.-allied Muslim governments.
1991 – Bin Laden leaves Saudi Arabia and goes into exile, having opposed the kingdom’s alliance with the United States against Iraq.
June 1993 – Bin Laden family moves to expel Osama as shareholder in its businesses, which focus on construction.
April 9, 1994 – Saudi Arabia, angered by bin Laden’s propaganda against its rulers, revokes his citizenship.
May 1996 – Bin Laden is forced to leave Sudan after U.S. pressure on its government, and goes to Afghanistan. August 1996 – Bin Laden issues a fatwa, or religious decree, that U.S. military personnel should be killed.
October 1996 – US brands bin Laden as a prime suspect in two bombings in Saudi Arabia which killed 24 U.S. servicemen and two Indians.
Aug 7, 1998 – Truck bombs explode at U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam killing 224, including 12 Americans.
Aug 20, 1998 – President Bill Clinton names bin Laden as America’s top enemy and accuses him of being responsible for the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings. U.S. launches missile strikes against what Clinton calls terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Sudan. One destroys a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, whose owner denies any affiliation with bin Laden.
Oct 12, 2000 – Al Qaeda strikes at destroyer USS Cole, harboured at Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen sailors are killed. Sept. 11, 2001 – Three hijacked planes crash into major U.S. landmarks, destroying New York’s World Trade Center and plunging into the Pentagon. A fourth hijacked plane crashes in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people are killed. In a video released later, bin Laden says the collapse of the towers exceeded al Qaeda’s expectations.
Sept 17, 2001 – U.S. President George W. Bush says bin Laden is “Wanted: Dead or Alive”.
Oct 7, 2001 – United States attacks Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, host to bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Dec 6, 2001 – Anti-Taliban forces capture bin Laden’s main base in Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
Sept. 10, 2002 – Al Jazeera broadcasts what it says is the voice of bin Laden praising the 9/11 hijackers as men who “changed the course of history”.
November 2002 – Al Qaeda claims responsibility for three suicide car bombs in Kenya which blew up the Mombasa Paradise resort hotel, popular with Israelis, killing 15 people and wounding 80.
October 2004 – Bin Laden bursts into the U.S. election campaign in his first videotaped message in over a year to deride Bush. January 2006 – Bin Laden’s first public message for over a year is a bid to show he is still in command of al Qaeda.
September 2006 – Bush vows “America will find you”.
September 2007 – Bin Laden issues first new video for nearly three years, telling U.S. it is vulnerable despite its power.
May 18, 2008 – Bin Laden urges Muslims to break the Israeli-led blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and fight Arab governments that deal with Israel. Jan. 24, 2010 – Bin Laden claims responsibility for the failed Dec. 25 bombing of a U.S.-bound plane in an audio tape and vows to continue attacks on the United States.
March 25, 2010 – Bin Laden threatens al Qaeda will kill any Americans it takes prisoner if accused Sept. 11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, held by United States, is put to death, according to an audiotape aired on al Jazeera.
Jan. 21, 2011 – Bin Laden says in an audio recording that the release of French hostages held in Niger by al Qaeda depends on France’s soldiers leaving Muslim lands.
May 2, 2011 – Osama bin Laden is killed in a million-dollar compound in the resort of Abbottabad, 60 km north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
May 2, 2011 – Osama bin Laden is buried at sea according to senior US administration officials who said Islamic practice calls for burial within 24 hours. They also said it would have been too hard to find a country willing to accept the remains of the world’s most wanted terrorist, and wanted to avoid creating a pilgrimage site.
I doubt Bush cares much for the spotlight anymore. The current administration condemned Bush for waterboarding and other means of getting classified information yet continued it’s practice. I wouldn’t want to be seen with Obama myself.