That’s how Debra Burlingame sums up her meeting with the President. She was part of a group of USS Cole and 9/11 victims’ families who went to the White House to discuss Obama’s Guantanamo detainee policies.
“News reports described the meeting as a touching and powerful coming together of the president and these long-suffering families,” Burlingame wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Obama reassured them that jihadists wouldn’t be freed.
But 17 days later, the al Qaeda operative selected by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for a post-9/11 attack with Jose Padilla was released.
The White House liaison to the families refused to answer questions.
“Given all the developments since our meeting with the president,” Burlingame said, “it is now evident that his words to us bore no relation to his intended actions on national security policy and detainee issues. But the narrative about Mr. Obama’s successful meeting with 9/11 and Cole families has been written, and the press has moved on.”
She concludes with this devastating summation, “The Obama team has established a pattern that should be plain for all to see. When controversy erupts or legitimate policy differences are presented by well-meaning people, send out the celebrity president to flatter and charm.”
Narrow-minded critics might say Obama promised Burlingame one thing, then did the opposite.
But the President prefers to say he gave her hope, then gave her change.
Source: Wall Street Journal
