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Individual Blog Post From Tom Weiss
Retired Lieutenant Colonel with multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. I've written non-fiction for professional journals. It drives me nuts when people think Jethro Tull is just a person in the band.Contact me at [email protected]
Monday, December 22nd 2014
Posted Mon Dec 22 2014 07:50
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In the summer of 2010 I took a trip to Dallas with about a dozen other wounded warriors from Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio at the invitation of the Dallas Cowboys. The team sponsored a scramble at their golf club (Did you know the team has it's own course complete with the iconic star in the middle of one fairway? I didn't.) and took us on a tour of their - at the time - brand new stadium.
(Amusing sidenote - if you think navigating airport security is difficult under normal circumstances, trying getting through when almost everyone in your party has a prosthetic limb or is in a wheelchair or has metal of some sort in their body.)
The night before the golf scramble (I found a recap of the event here - you can see a bad picture of me at the very end) we ate dinner at the "man cave" of one of the backers of the event. At dinner - amazing Texas barbecue - I was seated across the table from an older gentleman whose name escapes me four years on. At some point during the meal he was talking with a gentleman at another table and happened to mention that he "saw the President on the golf course that morning."
The President he alluded to, of course, was George W. Bush, who retired to Dallas after he left office. Once the man returned his attention to our table I asked him if he knew Bush. Oh yes, he said, he'd known Bush since before his days with the Texas Rangers.
My follow up question was based on things I'd heard from Bush staffers and people who had worked around him during his years in the White House. They told me he did a lot of things behind the scenes that the beltway press seldom, if ever, reported. I asked the seated across from me if he thought Bush was a good man.
His demeanor changed slightly. He put down his fork and leaned in closer to me before he said, solemnly, "He is the best man I've ever known."
I didn't ask another question. I didn't need to. I didn't grow up in Texas but I'd lived there long enough to grasp the full meaning of his statement.
So when I read, years later, articles like this in the Daily Mail, it doesn't surprise me. It is also not surprising that a British publication picked up the story and not The New York Times or The Washington Post. In this age of conscious uncoupling they can't report anything which distracts from their Bush=Hitler narrative.
I may not have agreed with him politically on any number of things, but President George W. Bush is a good man. That's all that needs to be said.
I hope you and yours have a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season this year.