Byrd Rips Bush's Aircraft Carrier Use
Tue May 6, 7:43 PM ET

By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Questioning the motives of a "desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior," Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd (news, bio, voting record) on Tuesday reproached President Bush (news - web sites) for flying onto an aircraft carrier last week to declare an end of major fighting in Iraq (news - web sites).

"I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw," Byrd said on the Senate floor.

Byrd, 85, of West Virginia, is the Senate's most senior member and was one of the most outspoken critics of the Iraq war.

Dressed in a flight suit, Bush was flown onto the USS Abraham Lincoln on Thursday, his small S-3B Viking jet making a tailhook landing. The ship was near San Diego on its return from action in the Persian Gulf.

With the sea as his backdrop, Bush announced that the United States and its allies had prevailed against Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) said Byrd's criticisms are "a disservice to the men and women of our military who deserved to be thanked in person."

"Senator Byrd did not support the president at the beginning of this, and it is no surprise that he does not support the president at the end," Fleischer said. "Senator Byrd is a patriot, but on this we disagree."

Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record) of California asked the General Accounting Office (news - web sites), Congress's investigative arm, to find out the cost of the president's trip.

The event "had clear political overtones," yet taxpayers footed the bill, wrote Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee (news - web sites), to the GAO.

Byrd contrasted the speech with the "simple dignity" of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address during the Civil War.

"I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely, ... but I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech," he said.

He said American blood has been shed defending Bush's policies. "This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial," he said.

"To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the president to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech," he said.

Fleischer has rejected any suggestion that the landing was intended to provide campaign footage for Bush's re-election campaign.

Earlier Tuesday, he also said Bush decided to land on the carrier on a jet instead of his usual helicopter because the president wanted "to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing. He wanted to see it as realistically as possible."

Waxman said Fleischer had provided conflicting accounts of the reasons for the president's trip by jet, initially indicating that the carrier would be hundreds of miles offshore, too far from land to be reached by helicopter


Ok maybe I am in the minority here but these two sumbitchs should shut the hell up, salute your president and move on. I took the liberty to look up their military service record just to make sure, guess what it is? Nada, zilch, zero. I never thought of his landing on an aircraft carrier with political overtones, maybe it was, but that was unimportant to me. This really don't surprise me though.



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