Bill Krisol met with Bush before his Iraq speech last week. I SPENT ABOUT 40 minutes with President Bush in the Oval Office late yesterday afternoon, in a meeting whose purpose was to allow the president to preview the Iraq speech he's giving today.
Interesting article, but the endly included this
I mentioned to the president a conversation I'd had with a couple of brigade commanders recently returned from Iraq. This led the president in turn to a discussion (off the record) about his many conversations with soldiers and Marines, and their families.
He commented on the private meeting he had held Tuesday with about a dozen Iraq and Afghanistan vets from the group Vets for Freedom, which he enjoyed. But he mentioned in particular Tuesday's Medal of Honor ceremony for Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, the Navy SEAL who threw himself on a grenade to save his comrades in Ramadi in September 2006.
I told the president that I had choked up watching the ceremony on television. I'll violate the off-the-record rules in order to convey the tenor of the president's lengthy response.
He explained how difficult it had been for him to keep his composure. This was especially the case, he said, when he was congratulating and comforting Petty Officer Mansoor's parents (this was evident on television).
What wasn't evident on the telecast was that when the president was reading his remarks and looked up at the audience, he saw the Navy SEALs assembled in the East Room, to a man, weeping. That's when, the president said, he really had to steel himself to retain his composure. The president had a catch in his voice yesterday, 24 hours later, talking about the ceremony.
And he had a certain amount of steel in his voice when he then reiterated his determination not to allow the sacrifices of our fighting men and women to have been made in vain.
The one thing parents and wives of slain soldiers and Marines most often asked of him, the president said, was to complete the mission for which their son or husband had died. And the president quietly said he was determined to do everything in his power to see to it that this country kept their loved ones' faith and honored their sacrifice.