Bush on Auschwitz

jwmorrice

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Let's see. He had to one up his father on Iraq by starting a war there. Now he's second guessing FDR. Might he......look out Poland!!! :eek:

jwm

Bush: US should have bombed Auschwitz

By ARON HELLER, Associated Press Writer 50 minutes ago
January 11, 2008

JERUSALEM -
President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel's Holocaust memorial Friday and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial's chairman said.

Bush emerged from a tour of the Yad Vashem memorial calling it a "sobering reminder" that evil must be resisted, and praising victims for not losing their faith.

Wearing a yarmulke, Bush placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps. He also lit a torch memorializing the victims.

Bush was visibly moved as he toured the site, said Yad Vashem's chairman, Avner Shalev.

"Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes," Shalev said.

At one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz camp taken during the war by U.S. forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, Shalev said.

"We should have bombed it," Bush said, according to Shalev.

In the memorial's visitors' book, the president wrote simply, "God bless Israel, George Bush."

The memorial was closed to the public and under heavy guard Friday, with armed soldiers standing on top of some of the site's monuments and a police helicopter and surveillance blimp hovering in the air overhead.

"I was most impressed that people in the face of horror and evil would not forsake their God. In the face of unspeakable crimes against humanity, brave souls — young and old — stood strong for what they believe," Bush said.

"I wish as many people as possible would come to this place. It is a sobering reminder that evil exists, and a call that when evil exists we must resist it," he said.

It was Bush's second visit to the Holocaust memorial, a regular stop on the visits of foreign dignitaries. His first was in 1998, as governor of Texas. The last U.S. president to visit was Bill Clinton in 1994.

Bush, making the most extensive Mideast trip of his presidency, was accompanied on his tour by a small party that included Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

At the compound, overlooking a forest on Jerusalem's outskirts, Bush visited a memorial to the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust, featuring six candles reflected 1.5 million times in a hall of mirrors. At the site's Hall of Remembrance, he heard a cantor sing a Jewish prayer for the dead.

Shalev presented Bush with illustrations of the Bible drawn by the Jewish artist Carol Deutsch, who perished in the Holocaust.

Deutsch created the works while in hiding from the Nazis in Belgium. He was informed upon, and died in 1944 in the Buchenwald camp. After the war, his daughter Ingrid discovered that the Nazis had confiscated their furniture and valuables but had left behind a single item: a meticulously crafted wooden box adorned with a Star of David and a seven-branched menorah, containing a collection of 99 of the artist's illustrations of biblical scenes.

The originals are on display at Yad Vashem. The memorial recently decided to produce a special series of 500 replicas, the first of which was to be presented to Bush.

Debbie Deutsch-Berman, a Yad Vashem employee whose grandfather was Deutch's brother, said she was proud that Bush would be given her relative's artwork.

"These are not just his paintings, they are his legacy, and the fact that they survived shows that as much as our enemies tried to destroy the ideas that these paintings embody, they failed," she said.

Later Friday, Bush was to wrap up his three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories with a visit to Christian holy sites in Galilee before departing for Kuwait, the next stop on his Mideast tour.
 

papasmerf

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if you are second guessing WWII you are at best a moron............
 

papasmerf

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jwmorrice said:
Well, that's what your boy Bush is doing. :p

jwm
Drop the politics and take a stand.......If you think the US was remiss in WWII state fact not politics
 

jwmorrice

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papasmerf said:
Drop the politics and take a stand.......If you think the US was remiss in WWII state fact not politics
Hello!! I never said that. Bush did. Read the article.

TGIF.

jwm
 

papasmerf

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jwmorrice said:
Hello!! I never said that. Bush did. Read the article.

TGIF.

jwm
Then I must figure your post is an election year doppelganger


How does it feel to be a useful idiot????????
 

jwmorrice

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papasmerf said:
Then I must figure your post is an election year doppelganger


How does it feel to be a useful idiot????????
Sorry pappy, but I'm not used to these bizarre exchanges. For that you'll have to await the appearance of your doppelganger, i.e. woodpeckr. I'm sure he'll be along at some point during the day.

jwm
 

Aardvark154

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jwmorrice said:
Let's see. He had to one up his father on Iraq by starting a war there. Now he's second guessing FDR. Might he......look out Poland!!! :eek:

Bush: US should have bombed Auschwitz.
Perhaps he's the first sitting president to make this remark (I haven't bothered to check), however, he's far from the first prominent person, or the first prominent American to state this.

As the expression goes, hindsight is always 20/20. However, there is bombing assessment film for other targets in Poland (USAAF and I believe RAF/RCAF as well) which when it was started early or left on late clearly shows the Auschwitz death camp.

So rather a “dog bites man” statement.
 

danmand

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Aardvark154 said:
Perhaps he's the first sitting president to make this remark (I haven't bothered to check), however, he's far from the first prominent person, or the first prominent American to state this.

As the expression goes, hindsight is always 20/20. However, there is bombing assessment film for other targets in Poland (USAAF and I believe RAF/RCAF as well) which when it was started early or left on late clearly shows the Auschwitz death camp.

So rather a “dog bites man” statement.
Yeah, great news. He would have, if he had been born then, ..............

What about bombing some of the facilities where suspected insurgents get tortured??
 

shakenbake

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danmand said:
Yeah, great news. He would have, if he had been born then, ..............

What about bombing some of the facilities where suspected insurgents get tortured??
The part that gets me is the tears in his eyes. Was he trying to pull a Hillary Clinton on us? Or, was it the remanants of tear gas from WW2? Or, was it sincere feelings on his part? The bombing comment was so Bush, however.
 

WoodPeckr

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shakenbake said:
The bombing comment was so Bush, however.
After all these years that 'shock & awe' schtick, still impresses that twit as the best way to settle things!...:rolleyes:
 

Asterix

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papasmerf said:
if you are second guessing WWII you are at best a moron............
Pappy, I always knew you'd finally come around. Took you seven years, and George is just about out of here, but better late than never.
 

Asterix

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Aardvark154 said:
Perhaps he's the first sitting president to make this remark (I haven't bothered to check), however, he's far from the first prominent person, or the first prominent American to state this.

As the expression goes, hindsight is always 20/20. However, there is bombing assessment film for other targets in Poland (USAAF and I believe RAF/RCAF as well) which when it was started early or left on late clearly shows the Auschwitz death camp.
Nearly impossible to go back and question what happened, or could have been done differently, and predict all of the unintended consequences. I wonder if the Allies had agressively bombed the camps, how much fuel that would give to the Holocaust deniers who could then claim the Nazis weren't the ones who had killed. As horrible as it was, there is value that the sites where the crimes were committed have survived.
 

Aardvark154

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Asterix said:
Nearly impossible to go back and question what happened, or could have been done differently, and predict all of the unintended consequences. I wonder if the Allies had agressively bombed the camps, how much fuel that would give to the Holocaust deniers who could then claim the Nazis weren't the ones who had killed. As horrible as it was, there is value that the sites where the crimes were committed have survived.
True. The critique I've generally read is that if the USAAF and or RAF/RCAF had bombed the rail lines leading to the death camps it would have substantial disrupted their operations. That said, a cliche among historians is that the past is a distant country. Even though it has only been 62 years that is most definitely a true statement.
 

Aardvark154

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Interesting the difference in take about the Presidents remarks in the world press and here on TERB.
 

LancsLad

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Asterix said:
Nearly impossible to go back and question what happened, or could have been done differently, and predict all of the unintended consequences. I wonder if the Allies had agressively bombed the camps, how much fuel that would give to the Holocaust deniers who could then claim the Nazis weren't the ones who had killed. As horrible as it was, there is value that the sites where the crimes were committed have survived.


No strategic value in bombing the camps. Seems to me the USAF and Bomber Command had a pretty full plate of targets already.
 

jwmorrice

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LancsLad said:
No strategic value in bombing the camps. Seems to me the USAF and Bomber Command had a pretty full plate of targets already.
No strategic value in bombing cities either but they did it.

jwm
 

jwmorrice

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LancsLad said:
Yes there was, been debated many times on this board.
In the last thread on that subject, I believe the only "strategic value" to bombing cities that possibly stood up was that it was good for allied morale. Saving the victims of concentration camps would probably have done that too. However, we'll never know. It's an empirical question and we can't rerun the war. So please, no further ex cathedra like pronouncements on strategy.

jwm
 

LancsLad

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jwmorrice said:
In the last thread on that subject, I believe the only "strategic value" to bombing cities that possibly stood up was that it was good for allied morale. Saving the victims of concentration camps would probably have done that too. However, we'll never know. It's an empirical question and we can't rerun the war. So please, no further ex cathedra like pronouncements on strategy.

jwm


My family lived through the bombings that the Hun did to Manchester and Liverpool and by their accounts knowing that our boys were giving it back to Jerry was a HUGE morale boost so don't try to lecture me.

As to the camps , the average British civilian had no interest in , if they were even aware of that issue. They had far too many problems of their own to worry about.
 
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