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kpete

(71,901 posts)
Sat Mar 28, 2015, 12:42 PM Mar 2015

Shrub got an intelligence award? Sometimes the jokes write themselves.

Last edited Sat Mar 28, 2015, 01:35 PM - Edit history (1)

Dick Cheney was too busy to drive 10 miles to see CIA give George W Bush an award.

?itok=S2ngKrWW

This year’s off-the-record event, officially the Ambassador Richard M. Helms Award Ceremony, named for a Cold War-era CIA director, honored former President George W. Bush, an odd choice, it would seem, given all the trouble his administration caused the CIA (and NSA) during its eight years in office.

..........

As for honoring Bush, McLaughlin said, It's not an intelligence award. It's an award for ‘service to the nation.’ Henry Kissinger, not an intelligence official, received the award last year.”

Gerald Komisar, a longtime former CIA veteran who is president of the foundation, told Newsweek, “We were very happy that Bush was able to accept our invitation.” Several senior members of the Bush administration also attended, including former White House chief of staff Andrew Card, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Homeland Security Advisor Frances Fragos Townsend. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was deeply involved in the manipulation of Iraq WMD intelligence, according to numerous reports over the years, passed up the event. “We tried to reach out to him but we couldn’t pin him down,” said Komisar, a veteran of 31 years at the CIA. “He was busy.”

Bush was honored for the “totality of the eight years he was in office,” Komisar said in a phone interview. “There were a lot of people there who attested to the fact that he did a great deal for and with the intelligence community.”


funny on too many levels:
http://www.newsweek.com/bush-gets-intelligence-group-award-317548
19 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Shrub got an intelligence award? Sometimes the jokes write themselves. (Original Post) kpete Mar 2015 OP
I didn't think one could utter Lifelong Protester Mar 2015 #1
It gets worse tularetom Mar 2015 #7
And I never use this Lifelong Protester Mar 2015 #9
My husband and I are visiting a cousin of mine of in the DC area right now... 3catwoman3 Mar 2015 #11
Except it's named after his dad, not after Dubya. nt pinboy3niner Mar 2015 #15
Eeyup. The complex is named for Bush the marginally smarter. hifiguy Mar 2015 #17
Yeah, I know that but it's still funny to see the words "George Bush" and "Intelligence" tularetom Mar 2015 #18
It's named after Poppy Bush, not Shrub jmowreader Mar 2015 #19
It looks like a "We need a Big Name as a draw for our event" award. JHB Mar 2015 #2
Perhaps there is some obscure, alternative definition of "intelligence?" ailsagirl Mar 2015 #3
McLaughlin: "It wasn't for intelligence so stop saying that!" pinboy3niner Mar 2015 #4
Talking intelligence, here's Bush interviewing Bush: Brother Buzz Mar 2015 #5
Cheney's a cry-baby! demwing Mar 2015 #6
Shrub and Cheney, "manipulating Iraq WMD intelligence" demwing Mar 2015 #8
wow. for the man who catapulted wilful ignorance into something to aspire to.... NRaleighLiberal Mar 2015 #10
It reads, "For sucessfully finding your ass with both hands in your back pockets." NightWatcher Mar 2015 #12
In his mind, it's like a Noble Piece Prize... Blue Owl Mar 2015 #13
''All right, you've covered your ass, now.'' -- George W Bush to CIA briefer, August 2001. Octafish Mar 2015 #14
“totality of the eight years he was in office” Thor_MN Mar 2015 #16

3catwoman3

(23,820 posts)
11. My husband and I are visiting a cousin of mine of in the DC area right now...
Sat Mar 28, 2015, 01:08 PM
Mar 2015

...and we drove right by this on the way from the airport to his house. We all laughed loudly and derisively.

tularetom

(23,664 posts)
18. Yeah, I know that but it's still funny to see the words "George Bush" and "Intelligence"
Sat Mar 28, 2015, 04:54 PM
Mar 2015

on the same sign.

jmowreader

(50,453 posts)
19. It's named after Poppy Bush, not Shrub
Sat Mar 28, 2015, 04:57 PM
Mar 2015

Poppy was the first DCI to be elected president. It's like naming an aircraft carrier after Gerald Ford or a submarine after Jimmy Carter.

JHB

(37,133 posts)
2. It looks like a "We need a Big Name as a draw for our event" award.
Sat Mar 28, 2015, 12:47 PM
Mar 2015
Every winter for the past several years, the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation has held a glittering dinner around Washington attended by hundreds of top intelligence and corporate officials. The stated purpose of the event, where the cost of sponsor tables ranges from $12,000 to $100,000, is to help raise money for the spouses and children of agency operatives killed in the line of battle since the September 11, 2011 terrorist attacks. But it also serves as an annual reunion of sorts for top intelligence officials and the corporate chieftains of America’s biggest military contractors.


A fundraiser needs its "premiums", and for that kind of scratch you need a name that will bring in the target crowd.
 

demwing

(16,916 posts)
6. Cheney's a cry-baby!
Sat Mar 28, 2015, 12:53 PM
Mar 2015
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was deeply involved in the manipulation of Iraq WMD intelligence, according to numerous reports over the years, passed up the event. “We tried to reach out to him but we couldn’t pin him down,” said Komisar, a veteran of 31 years at the CIA. “He was busy.”


NRaleighLiberal

(59,940 posts)
10. wow. for the man who catapulted wilful ignorance into something to aspire to....
Sat Mar 28, 2015, 01:08 PM
Mar 2015


We may never undo the damage that this criminal inflicted on the entire world.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
14. ''All right, you've covered your ass, now.'' -- George W Bush to CIA briefer, August 2001.
Sat Mar 28, 2015, 02:45 PM
Mar 2015
From WaPo's review of Suskind's book:

Tenet and his loyalists also settle a few scores with the White House here. The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now." Three months later, with bin Laden holed up in the Afghan mountain redoubt of Tora Bora, the CIA official managing the Afghanistan campaign, Henry A. Crumpton (now the State Department's counterterrorism chief), brought a detailed map to Bush and Cheney. White House accounts have long insisted that Bush had every reason to believe that Pakistan's army and pro-U.S. Afghan militias had bin Laden cornered and that there was no reason to commit large numbers of U.S. troops to get him. But Crumpton's message in the Oval Office, as told through Suskind, was blunt: The surrogate forces were "definitely not" up to the job, and "we're going to lose our prey if we're not careful."

SOURCE: The Shadow War, In a Surprising New Light

 

Thor_MN

(11,843 posts)
16. “totality of the eight years he was in office”
Sat Mar 28, 2015, 04:20 PM
Mar 2015

They are giving him an attendance award? Damn right it's not an Intelligence Award, Shrub set a record on skip days...

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