Opening a second front: Slaves came to America for Freedom

First who has the source on this comment? We gotta get this one confirmed. Then we have to pound it into the ground with repition. This is stupider than "You have blacks here too?" This line could destroy any link BFEE still might have to the African American community and will further the public perception that he is just a blithering idiot and an embarassment to the world.

I wonder if it will be scrubbed.

Remarks by the President to Embassy Personnel in Senegal, Africa July 8, 2003 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/print/20030708-3.html

"This is an historic trip -- oh, there's the Ambassador. (Applause.) But we are so honored to start our trip to this continent here in Senegal.

"I had the opportunity to go out to Goree Island and talk about what slavery meant to America.

"It's very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in "freedom," helped change America.

note: there's a previous thread here in GenDisc...I'll be back with a link...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=27252&mesg_id=27252&listing_type=search

...reminds me of official Japanese attempts to discuss what they did to Asia before and during WWII. Of course with dim son we have the added dimension of his inability to conceptualize abstract subjects coupled with his limited fund of knowlege and vocabulary.

OI MY VEY!

Trying to be a little fair, Bush seems to be making the argument that they came here and found freedom. Verse the nightmare(s) going on in Africa right now.

After I read this recently I can understand what he is talking about.

An American in Africa

I watched the dead float down a river in Tanzania. It's one of those apocryphal stories you always hear coming out of Africa, meant to demonstrate the savagery of "the natives." Babies being pulled off their mothers' backs and tossed onto spears. Pregnant women being disemboweled. Bodies being tossed into the river and floating downstream. You heard them all, but never really believed.

....
And yet there I was, drenched with sweat under the blistering sun, standing at the Rusumo Falls bridge, watching the bodies float past me. Sometimes they came one by one. Sometimes two or three together. They were bloated now, horribly discolored. Most were naked, or stripped down to their underpants. Sometimes the hands and feet were bound together. Some were missing limbs. And as they went over the falls, a few got stuck together on a little crag, and stayed there flapping against the current, as though they were trying to break free. I couldn't take my eyes off of the body of a baby.

....

And yet I know exactly this feeling that haunts me; I've just been too embarrassed to say it. So let me drop the charade and put it as simply as I know how: There but for the grace of God go I.

You see, I was seeing all of this horror a bit differently because of the color of my skin. I am an American, but a black man, a descendant of slaves brought from Africa. When I see these nameless, faceless, anonymous bodies washing over a waterfall or piled up on the back of trucks, what I see most is that they look like me.

Please do not dismiss the substance of the words because of the source.

HELL-o! I have a problem with that bent, bullshit historical perspective.

Bush is a dimwitted moron. Maybe you could get someone else to talk about Africa. I mean, do you REALLY think he gives shit one about the AIDS problem in Africa? Do you really think he's not an out and out racist?

It seems sort of voluntary and oxymoron-ish when someone says "Slaves came to America".

The truth was they where taken to America or brought to America or forced to America...they didnt just come to America.

Bad choice of words on Bushes part.

and more proof of his idiocy

er....escorted?

the slaves who left here to go to America,

Which is is of course more benign than the truth. But I don't think the words he choose will envoke a whole lot of outrage.

or they wouldn't have been slaves

maybe shrub is not a racist,but the clowns around him seem to be ,that includes Co-Land and Con-di-sleezy,Chaney is a known racist and the top guns in the senate and the house of rep.

Think about that.

the slaves were the equivalent of English Puritans who fled religious persecution. The slaves weren't exactly "encouraged" to practice their native religion in America.

yup,you are right..an 8 grader could have construted a better speech that that..

. . his statement can and will be interpreted as LARED suggests.

We know he's a inarticulate mis-speaking jerk but I'm afraid this statement does not prove it to anyone but those of us who already know that.

Was it written for him or not?

That is the biggest question here