Laura Bush’s buzz-word: “Sad”
Cut and pasted from the forum over here. No, I don’t believe in aliens…
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US First Lady Laura Bush says she was deeply saddened by the scandal over US troops’ abuse of Iraq prisoners. Saying the abuses made her “sad, really sad,” the first lady told ABC television: “To be perfectly frank I can’t bear to look at the ones that have been in the newspaper.
“It is really, really sad, I mean, it is sad. I think we — we agonize as each of those pictures come out and as we see them. It is a picture we don’t want the rest of the world to have of us,” she said, adding that she was concerned about US troops safety noting the scandal “makes our troops more vulnerable.”
She said President George W. Bush had been “very anguished” by the affair which has done serious damage to the US image abroad, and especially in the Arab world.
“Those photographs don’t represent America. They don’t represent our troops. And they don’t represent the way people in the United States of America think or act, Laura Bush added. “It is not a fair picture of the United States military”
“When we look at what we have done in Iraq where — you know they have water, they have electricity, schools have been refurbished. I’m working on building a children’s hospital in Iraq,” the US first lady said.
“In Afghanistan, where little girls are in school for the first time in their lives because they have been liberated from the Taliban, I think all of those are the really good things that the United States military and the actions of the United States government have taken. We need to remind the world of that as well,” Laura Bush said.
She insisted however, that there is a silver lining.
“This is the really good news about the United States of America, though. That is the pictures came to light. People will be prosecuted. Unlike under Saddam Hussein , where there were torture rooms and know one knew about them and didn’t come to light,” the US first lady said.
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Remarks excerpted by Mrs. Laura Bush At the National Press Club – November 8, 2001
“The United States is now a “sadder and less innocent” nation …”
“We have felt sadness and anger and fear, yet out of those emotions have risen courage and hope.”
“I’ll say “I’m sad,” and they’ll nod and say they are sad too.”
“For over an hour I believed that it had been hit, and for the people there — people we worship with almost every weekend.”
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Conciously getting away from the image of Hillary Clinton… Laura Bush, dynamic librarian / house-wife.
Maybe I’m unfairly riffing off of pure tragedies here, but…