The commander in chief yelled to military aide: "You're a wimp! Go get 'em."

[kpete]

In an obscure 2003 book titled "Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes" by Kenneth T. Walsh, there is an incredible anecdote that sums up George W. Bush. Read it and weep:
http://www.amazon.com/Air-Force-One-History-Presidents/dp/0786888199/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231952339&sr=8-1

Another innovation is Bush's interest in the board game Risk, in which players amass armies and try to conquer the world. En route home from Europe in July 2001, Bush supervised a particularly competitive game. The president encouraged each participant to take the biggest risks possible and to attack each other mercilessly. At one point, he goaded his military aide, supposedly an expert on military maneuvers and strategy, to take some chances. When he did so and found his armies annihilated, Bush teased the aide for being the first to lose. Supervising another game, the commander in chief yelled "You're a wimp! Go get 'em."

Did Bush think of our soldiers as just pawns, just game pieces?



Did he not know that they were human beings?



http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/14/152741/305/508/679883

[NMDemDist2]

1. he played Risk? to relax?

well that explains a lot doesn't it? :cry:

[bushmeister0]

7. Maureen Dowd: A Risky Game of Risk

"W. always acts like he's upping the ante in a board game where you roll the dice and bet your plastic army divisions on the outcome. This doesn't surprise some of his old classmates at Yale, who remember Junior as the riskiest Risk player of them all, known for dropping by the rooms of friends, especially when they were trying to study for exams, for extended bouts of "The Game of Global Domination."

Junior was known as an extremely aggressive player in the venerable Parker Brothers board game, a brutal contest that requires bluster and bluffing as you invade countries, all the while betraying alliances. Notably, it's almost impossible to win Risk and conquer the world if you start the game in the Middle East, because you're surrounded by enemies.

His gamesmanship extended to sports - he loved going into overtime and demanding that points be played over because he wasn't quite ready."

http://www.truthout.org/article/maureen-dowd-a-risky-game-risk

Sociopaths love company?

Condi Rice comes to mind . . .

Judith Warner wrote an Op-Ed in the NYT about what a refreshing change it was from Condi's usual "robotic equanimity" to see Sec Def Robert Gates wiping away tears as he spoke about a Marine who was killed in Iraq this past May. Such human emotion has been seriously lacking from all of Bush's Gods of War. Warner quotes a very revealing passage from a biography of Rice called "Twice as Good," in which, Rice in her late teens after many years of "assiduous and ambitious practice," washes out of concert piano school. It seems Rice's teacher felt she lacked the "interest or inclination" to "make someone else's thoughts or emotions own." I don't know about you, but that sounds like we're getting into sociopath territory to me.

Definition: Antisocial Personality Disorder is chronic, beginning in adolescence and continuing throughout adulthood. There are ten general symptoms: Not learning from experience, no sense of responsibility, inability to form meaningful relationships, inability to control impulses, lack of moral sense, chronically antisocial behavior, no change in behavior after punishment, emotional immaturity lack of guilt, self-centeredness."

http://imnotworthy.blogspot.com/2007/08/what-is-deal-with-condi-rice.html

[Hekate]

9. Sociopathy? That's W. But with Condi it's good old-fashioned repression. nt

[rurallib]

2. With W it is all a game

win, lose, have some fun. I hope the last play of the game involves a trip to prison for war crimes.

[The Blue Flower]

4. Just look at his official portrait

Mr. Casual. None of it mattered to him.

[fasttense]

3. Sociopaths don't see others as people.

To sociopaths, people are just more object to manipulate and use, then throw away when they are no longer of use. People are merely things to sociopaths and the bushes.

[ColbertWatcher]

6. Yup, this is exactly what Dumbya's problem is. n/t

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

5. What did his Dad call people?

OFU? One fodder unit or something.

[applegrove]

8. I'll never play risk again!

[SpiralHawk]

10. "Smiiiirrrrrk." - Commander AWOL (R)

[Donald Ian Rankin]

11. Much as it pains me to defend Bush, this is silly.

The fact that he treats game pieces like game pieces is not evidence one way or the other as to whether he treats human beings like game pieces.

[flying rabbit]

12. I'll bet Obama prefers "Diplomacy" to "Risk"

It's a better game.