Bullshit Alert: When Has Bush Ever "Weeped" With Families of Dead Soldiers?

NY Times columnist David Brooks spent 110 minutes with Bush and insists, "Bush is not blind to the realities in Iraq" because Bush "lives through" difficult moments: "the trips to Walter Reed, the hours and hours spent weeping with or being rebuffed by the families of the dead."

I have no doubt Bush has been "rebuffed by the families of the dead," although such rebuffs have never been reported - and should be.

I also have no doubt the families that didn't rebuff Bush did a lot of weeping.

But my Bullshit Detector is going off the charts at the suggestion that Bush spent one second - let alone "hours and hours" - weeping with them.

Just read Cindy Sheehan's description of her meeting with Bush, as told to William Rivers Pitt:

After Casey's death, Cindy Sheehan was invited to the White House for a visit with Mr. Bush in June of 2004. Her first memory of Bush's appearance that day was when he walked into the room and said in a loud, bluff voice, "Who we'all honorin' today?"

"His mouth kept moving," Sheehan later recalled of her meeting with Bush, "but there was nothing in his eyes or anything else about him that showed me he really cared or had any real compassion at all. This is a human being totally disconnected from humanity and reality. His eyes were empty, hollow shells." Bush called her "Ma" or "Mom" throughout the whole meeting, and never got around to learning her name.

"The whole meeting was simply bizarre and disgusting," Sheehan said later, "designed to intimidate instead of providing compassion. He didn't even know our names. I just couldn't believe this was happening. It was so surreal and bizarre. Later I met with some of the other fifteen or sixteen families who were at the White House the same day and, sure enough, they all felt the same way I did."

So here's a challenge to the NY Times: why don't you interview some of the Gold Star Families that have met with Bush and find out who's telling the truth - David Brooks or Cindy Sheehan.

And if Brooks is fabricating stories to humanize a soulless robot, it's time to give Brooks the Jayson Blair treatment.