Widows Give Bush an Earful (closed door session but this widow talks)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/administration/whbriefing/?referrer=email


Widows Give Bush an Earful
Thursday, Apr 14, 2005; 12:03 PM

Behind closed doors at the Ft. Hood army base on Tuesday, President Bush got an earful from some Iraq-war widows, who told him that the way the government is treating them is disgraceful.

"I just told him it was very wrong," one of the widows, Linnie Blankenbecler, 47, told me yesterday. "I was not intimidated by the president. My hardest reality was the death of my husband."

Bush spent more than three hours Tuesday meeting with 33 families of soldiers who died in Iraq. But the meetings were closed to the press and the White House only released sketchy details about what his interactions were like. (See yesterday's column.)

Blankenbecler had told the local paper, the Killeen Daily Herald, that she was planning to talk to the president about survivor benefits. So I called her up to find out how it went......

Blankenbecler is most upset about two things.

One is the rule that widows call the SBP-DIC offset, which actually takes away a dollar from one benefit for every dollar they get in the other.

"It's disgusting," Blankenbecler said.

The second is a provision in a bill Bush signed in December 2003 that added an extra $250 per dependent child to the DIC payment. But widows whose husbands died before the effective date -- Jan. 1, 2005 -- saw little or nothing of that benefit.

what she was talking about. He didn't even realize what he had done.

This absolutely vomitous :puke:

<snip>

The first thing he did was he told me he was sorry for the loss of my husband. For a year and a half, I had been wanting him to tell me that he was sorry -- not that I was holding him responsible in any way, but I was wanting to hear those words from him."

What was important, she said, was "just that he acknowledge that it happened, and that it has happened to 1,500 families. And I wanted him to tell me that personally, that he was sorry for my loss, and acknowledge that my husband was not just a number."

On that front, Blankenbecler declared herself satisfied.

"He's a very touchy, personable sort of president," she said, by "touchy" meaning "he's real free to kiss your cheek, to kiss your forehead, to hold your hand. He's just very, very charming, and I thought very compassionate."

...She does not hold him responsible in ANY WAY?!? She has truely never had any critical thinking skills if she cannot connect the freakin dots... bush lied + Iraq War = Husband dead! :banghead;

even if it's your twisted view of a man who has none of the virtues you describe. Phony Christian, phony (p)Resident, phony compassionate, phony conservative

Blankenbecler said: "I know that he doesn't understand everything that he signs, completely.

She has it totally wrong, he doesn't understand ANYTHING he signs AT ALL.

she admits to being a bush** supporter. :eyes:

and her "touchy" kisses, and after all, what more can you expect from your president than "not understanding everything he signs". You know, maybe being an idiot isn't such a bad thing. Maybe then, reading stuff like this wouldn't tie my stomach up in knots.